Today the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Google for its Google Doodles feature, wherein the company's home page logo is customized on certain holidays or days to commemorate a certain person, place, or thing.
Problem is, this is not Sergey Brin's or Google's invention. It is PLATO's. (And who knows, there might have been prior art even before the early to mid 1970s when the practice was commonplace on PLATO's "welcome page.")
Consider that Sergey Brin was born on August 21, 1973. Thanksgiving day that year fell on November 22, 1973. On that day, the PLATO welcome page looked like this:
[画像:PLATO Welcome Page on Thanksgiving Day, 1973 showing a turkey instead of the clock]
Sergey Brin, inventor of the customized welcome to celebrate a holiday, was just 93 days old. I know he was brilliant, but I didn't think he was that brilliant. I also didn't know he had an author signon on the CERL PLATO system. The things one learns...
Here is another example I have blogged about in the past: Valentine's Day, 1975.
Now, a persnickety IP lawyer might say, but look, what Google is claiming is a customized logo not a customized clock. On PLATO welcome pages, when a special day arrived, the clock was customized, not the logo. To which i would say, you're being persnickety and that is not the point. The general idea is identical. Top of fold, most prominent thing on the introductory page of a computer service gets customized for special occasions to attract user attention and have a little fun in the process. End of story.
Here's an example of a Google Doogle celebrating Thanksgiving 2010:.
[画像:Google's patented reinvention of PLATO's innovation from the 1970s]
Google's 2010 Thanksgiving welcome page. 37 years after PLATO.
(Thanks to a tip from "theodp", whose actual name I have never known in all the years he or she has been emailing me.)
Please help support this important project to document and archive the history of the PLATO computer system and its online community. Your support is appreciated!
