Anyone looking to Google’s bare-bones home page for Web-site design inspiration might want to search elsewhere — the Internet giant has won the right to sue anyone who uses a similarly no-frills look for their site.
Google won a 5½-year war with Washington bureaucrats to patent the search giant’s minimalist layout, immediately raising questions about the future of other simple and plain Web sites, including rival Yahoo!’s.
The US Patent and Trademark Office had resisted awarding rights to Google’s home page amid questions about whether the design possessed the same kind of originality that’s found in Google’s Web-search technology, which earned its patent in 2006.
After lengthy reviews, the government decided to give Google a separate patent for its home page on the grounds it was an innovative “graphical user interface.”
But that decision could have broad implications for other Web sites that have likewise opted for a simple and clean look. Yahoo! has developed a strikingly minimalist search page using mostly white space and just a handful of words around the search window.
Said one blogger, “I would question whether the Google home page was entirely original.”
That Google sought to patent its home page speaks to the extent of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s obsession with the home page.
According to the book “Inside Larry & Sergey’s Brain,” the pair were so focused on the home page that they mandated that it feature no more than 24 words on the blank white space.