Credit should be given where it is due... maybe Google forgot that or maybe they did come up with the lovely idea of indexing websites and presenting results through a single website, but it looks like someone other than Lawrence Page patented a similar invention some 3 years before the Google creators filed their own patent. This was released in Boston Globe, Computerworld, and probably some thousand blogs by nowYou can view the patent by Kenneth P. Baclawski here
I'm not 100% sure if this the corresponding Google patent, but try here or here.
Patents are actually a way of telling someone "You can't step on my grass without paying!", if you browse through at Google Patents search, you'll find out quite a load of inventions brought down and described on paper, i.e. "patented". I bet it's impossible to patent a new invention nowadays and not to cite older ones. Either way, I believe patents are evil - They actually restrict you because someone else had a bright moment and was quick enough to write it down on a piece of paper, and that someone now requests to receive from Google a "noble" (try "adequately enormous") royalty.
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