[patentnerd]

I agree that the algorithm would have been published anyway, since it was part of Page's PhD work, I believe. But I disagree that the patent hasn't been used for "good."

Google has been a huge net positive in the development of the Internet in the last decade+. All of this development is the result of Google's dominance in search. The PageRank algorithm was where that began. Yes, things might have turned out the same without the patent. Or maybe Yahoo would have integrated the algorithm and cut Google off at its knees, and we'd all be stuck using hotmail with 2MB inboxes. I think it's unfair to simply dismiss the beneficial impact of the patent on the algorithm that started Google.