Google Patent Search Not Shut Down - GUI Modified

This modifies my post on April 22, 2012.

Jon Orwant of Google was nice enough to point out Google Patent is not being shut down, which I think is good news.

Here's Jon's email to me, which he gave me permission to post today

From: Jon Orwant [mailto:orwant@google.com] 

Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 7:58 AM
To: rgmoll@patentplanet.com
Subject: Google isn't shutting down Patent Search

Hi Robert,

Searching for patents on Google is the same as before; it's just that the entry screen looks different.  When you go to http://patents.google.com, that redirects you to google.com in "Patents Mode" -- you can tell by the gray "Search patents" text in the search box, and by the red "Patents" on the left of pages of search results.  All of this is just cosmetics: patent search works the same and all the results are still there.

Any chance you could amend http://patentplanetblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/google-drops-google-patent-search.html to reflect that?

I had read Time Magazine's What Are You Doing to Google Patents, Google? as noting Google was shutting down Google Patent Search and redirecting search queries from Google Patent Search to Google's homepage. The Official Google Code blog had a post entitled: Spring cleaning for some of our APIs notifying the Patent Search API would be shut down per the following: Google Patent Search API (Deprecated) and Google patent search deprecation policy.

If you read the deprecation notice it is a bit confusing, but having tried Google Patent Search at http://patents.google.com that Jon emailed today, it appears Google has only modified the user interface and still limits a patent search to just patents and published applications.

Again thanks to Jon for clarifying this today. Thus, I can recommend searching on Google Patents as well as www.freepatentsonline.com. 

Copyright © 2012 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.