Google page rank patent expires today

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en

what significance, if any, will this have?

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Not much- The algorithm itself has been available for non-commercial research for a while now, the actual algorithm used by Google has been constantly tweaked and updated over these last few years, and Google has used the years of patent protection and lax antitrust regulation to dominate the search market and become the data behemoth that it is today.

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Part of what makes Google Google is the data they hold. Pagerank is just an algorithm, when two otherwise equally good search algorithms compete the one with better data will give “better” results.

The question is whether “good enough” can be achieved such that someone can meaningfully compete with Google

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