Google Inc.

Benjamin Thomas Smith

Sanjay Ghemawat

Benedict A Gomes

Sergey Brin

Anurag Acharya

Christopher D Manning

Jeffrey Adgate Dean

Monika Hildegard Henzinger

Luiz Andre Barroso

Dirk Balfanz

Kan Liu

Michal Levin

Deborah Anne Wallach

Nishit Shah

Caesar Sengupta

Eric Sachs

John Abraham Bauer

Mayank Dutt Upadhyay

A first computing device monitors a presence of a second computing device, and determines when the second computing device has moved out of an area proximate to the first computing device. In response to determining that the second computer moved out of the area, the first computing device is automatically configured to limit user interaction with one or more applications currently operating on the first computing device to a predetermined set of commands while preventing user interaction with other applications provided by the first computing device.

Limiting user interaction with a computing device based on proximity of a user

An improved duplicate detection technique that uses query-relevant information to limit the portion(s) of documents to be compared for similarity is described. Before comparing two documents for similarity, the content of these documents may be condensed based on the query. In one embodiment, query-relevant information or text (also referred to as 'snippets') is extracted from the documents and only the extracted snippets, rather than the entire documents, are compared for purposes of determining similarity.

Detecting query-specific duplicate documents

A search query containing one or more terms is received from a client system. In response to receiving the search query, one or more snippets obtained in response to a prior execution of said search query are requested from a cache. For a respective snippet received from the cache, it is determined whether the respective snippet is a current version. In response to a determination that the respective snippet is not the current version, the current version of the respective snippet is obtained from a corresponding document in which one or more terms from said search query are located and the snippet stored in the cache is updated using the obtained current version. Search query results including the respective snippet are transmitted to the client.

Search engine cache control

A search query containing at least one term is received at a search controller from a query server and preferably normalized and hashed into a representation of the search query. The representation of the search query is transmitted towards a cache containing multiple query result entries. Each query result entry contains a list of documents associated with the previously searched search query. The cache is then searched and query result entries for the search query are sent to the search controller from the cache. Subsequently, it is determined whether the query result entries are current versions for the search query. If the query result entries are not the current versions, then current versions of the query result entries are obtained.

A system and method for providing load balanced processing is described. One or more files selected from a set of files are logically duplicated. At least one file and at least one logically duplicated file, is stored at one of a plurality of servers as specified in a load balancing layout. Execution of each operation in an operation stream is scheduled on the server storing at least one staged file required by the operation.

System and method for providing load balanced processing

Methods and apparatus consistent with the invention allow a user to submit an ambiguous search query and to receive relevant search results. In one embodiment, a sequence of numbers received from a user of a standard telephone keypad is translated into a set of potentially corresponding alphanumeric sequences. These potentially corresponding alphanumeric sequences are provided as an input to a conventional search engine, using a boolean 'OR' expression, and the search results are presented to the user. The search engine effectively limits search results to those in which the user was likely interested.

Methods and apparatus for providing search results in response to an ambiguous search query

A system allows a user to submit an ambiguous search query and to receive potentially disambiguated search results. In one implementation, a search engine's conventional alphanumeric index is translated into a second index that is ambiguated in the same manner as which the user's input is ambiguated. The user's ambiguous search query is compared to this ambiguated index, and the corresponding documents are provided to the user as search results.

Methods and apparatus for using a modified index to provide search results in response to an ambiguous search query

An improved duplicate detection technique that uses query-relevant information to limit the portion(s) of documents to be compared for similarity is described. Before comparing two documents for similarity, the content of these documents may be condensed based on the query. In one embodiment, query-relevant information or text (also referred to as &ldquo;snippets&rdquo;) is extracted from the documents and only the extracted snippets, rather than the entire documents, are compared for purposes of determining similarity.

Growing community of inventors

Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Benjamin Thomas Smith