An interesting bit of internet trivia.

The foundation for how the Google search engine works is called PageRank which is an algorithm created by Larry Page the co-founder of Google.

But here's the interesting thing. Neither Larry Page nor the Google company own the patent on it because Page developed the thing while he was still a student at Stanford.
Which means that Stanford owns the patent for this thing, and not Google.
SO, Google has to pay Stanford for a license to make use of it.

So how much is the algorithm worth to Google?

Answer: Google gave Stanford 1.3 million shares of Google stock for the license rights.
And Stanford sold the stock for $336 million.

One/third of a billion dollars for an algorithm!

 

Considering their bottom line, it's a drop in the bucket.

Eric wrote:

Considering their bottom line, it's a drop in the bucket.

But when I was in business my philosophy was to avoid as much overhead expense as I could possibly avoid. I never could sleep well when I had overhead bills coming in, knowing I had to produce enough revenue first just to cover that. The thought of having one expense be 1/3 of a billion dollars gives me cold chills. lol