…Didn’t [the PTO] think it was fishy when Google credited 11 inventors on two continents in its newly-issued patent? That‘s a lot of brainpower for child’s play, and even for, as the patent calls it, a broader “WEB-BASED SYSTEM FOR GENERATION OF INTERACTIVE GAMES BASED ON DIGITAL VIDEOS.” Google illustrated the patent with pictures of the age-old kids game “rocks, paper, scissors,” and described some very boring uses, like:
Clicking on an annotation corresponding to a ‘rock’, “paper”, or “scissors” menu item leads to separate video or portion of the same video depicting a tie, a win, or a loss, respectively, each outcome potentially leading to the display of additional annotations representing a second round of the game.
Whatever. This will be used immediately for porn. And even though that sort of thing is not allowed on YouTube per se, Google will earn further insane riches on the royalties.
–Ann Bartow
