[dangrossman]

1) Google needs patents to stay in business because other companies have patents to use against them.

2) See #1. Stanford owns the patent on PageRank because it was developed by Stanford graduate students on an NSF research grant. Not really relevant.

[juiceandjuice]

Even more ironic: Stanford got a significant amount of shares from Google for allowing Google exclusive license.

Also, it is a mathematical algorithm in every sense of the word. A lot of patents aren't.

[davorak]

As far as I can tell all software patents are patents on math. Here is one example of a software patent reduced to mathematics and logic the extends it to all software patents: http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931...