Google Assigned Fourteen Patents

Searching and tagging media storage with knowledge database
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,189,528) developed by Gaw, Shirley, Paris, France, Vuskovic, Vladimir, Zollikerberg, Switzerland, and Fumica, Raul Marian, Zurich, Switzerland, for a “searching and tagging media storage with a knowledge database.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system and method for searching media storage with a knowledge database is provided. The system includes a search retrieving unit to retrieve a search request, an association retrieval unit to retrieve an association between a content item from the media storage and an identification from the knowledge database based on the search request, and an output unit to output data generated by the association retrieval unit. A method tagging a content item with a knowledge database includes determining the content item to be tagged, tagging the content item with an identification from the knowledge database, and storing the content item and the tagged identification in a tag database.“

The patent application was filed on March 15, 2013 (13/835,116).

Virtual machine memory management
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,176,889) developed by Earhart, III, Robert H., Seattle, WA, for a “virtual machine memory management.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for determining image search results. One of the methods includes receiving a notification that contents of a first memory page for a first virtual machine on a first host machine are the same as contents of a second memory page for a second virtual machine on a second different host machine. Storage space occupied by the first memory page on the first host machine is deallocated based on the notification. A request from the first virtual machine for the first memory page is received. In response to the request, a copy of contents of the second memory page is obtained from the second host machine.“

The patent application was filed on March 15, 2013 (13/837,303).

Single-sided distributed cache system
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,164,702) developed by Nesbit, Kyle, Madison, WI, and Diehl, Scott Fredrick, Madison, WI, for a “single-sided distributed cache system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed cache system including a data storage portion, a data control portion, and a cache logic portion in communication with the data storage and data control portions. The data storage portion includes memory hosts, each having non-transitory memory and a network interface controller in communication with the memory for servicing remote direct memory access requests. The data control portion includes a curator in communication with the memory hosts. The curator manages striping of data across the memory hosts. The cache logic portion executes at least one memory access request to implement a cache operation. In response to each memory access request, the curator provides the cache logic portion a file descriptor mapping data stripes and data stripe replications of a file on the memory hosts for remote direct memory access of the file on the memory hosts through the corresponding network interface controllers.“

The patent application was filed on September 7, 2012 (13/607,179).

Hierarchical chunking of objects in distributed storage system
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,158,472) developed by Kesselman, Alexander, Sunnyvale, CA, O’Reilly, Michael, Sydney, Austrilia, Datuashvili, George, Sunnyvale, CA, and Drobychev, Alexandre, San Mateo, CA, for a “hierarchical chunking of objects in a distributed storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Placement of object replicas in a distributed storage system includes, at a first instance, opening a journal for storage of object chunks. Each journal is associated with a single placement policy. An object is received, which comprises a chunk. The object has a placement policy, and the chunk comprises a plurality of storage blocks. The blocks are stored in a journal that matches the placement policy. Global metadata for the object is stored, which includes a list of chunks for the object. Local metadata for the chunk is stored, which includes a block list identifying each block of the plurality of blocks. The local metadata is associated with the journal. The journal is later closed. The journal is subsequently replicated to a second instance according to the placement policy. The global metadata is updated to reflect the replication, whereas the local metadata is unchanged by the replication.“

The patent application was filed on December 27, 2013 (14/142,706).

Accessing objects in hosted storage
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,154,502) developed by Erb, David, and Aikas, Erkki Ville, Seattle, WA, for a “accessing objects in hosted storage.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A hosted storage service stores a virtual data object that corresponds to data. The virtual data object includes metadata that enables access to the data in a delegated storage service but does not include the data. A delegate storage service stores the data. The hosted storage service receives a request for access to the virtual object and sends a response that includes metadata to access the data in a delegated storage service. The delegate storage service receives a request for access to the data based on the metadata. In response to receiving the request for access to the data object, the delegate storage service sends the data to the client application.“

The patent application was filed on January 31, 2013 (13/756,383).

Load balancing and content preservation
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,154,367) developed by Kontothanassis, Leonidas, Lexington, MA, Schultz, Paul, Saratoga, CA, Presotto, David, Palo Alto, CA, and Jain, Ankur, Mountain View, CA, for a “load balancing and content preservation.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving a plurality of requests from a plurality of client devices sent to a public internet protocol address, routing the requests to one or more internal Internet protocol addresses, where the one or more internal Internet protocol addresses correspond to one or more compute nodes, and where the one or more compute nodes process the routed requests, determining a particular compute node is offline, where the particular compute node is assigned one or more internal Internet protocol addresses, in response to the determination that the particular node is offline, reassigning the one or more internal Internet protocol addresses corresponding to the particular compute node to one or more different compute nodes, where requests communicated to the reassigned internal Internet protocol addresses are communicated to the one or more different compute nodes for processing.“

The patent application was filed on December 27, 2011 (13/338,024).

Adaptive and prioritized replication scheduling in storage clusters
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,110,823) developed by Drobychev, Alexandre, San Mateo, CA, and O’Reilly, Michael, Pyrmont, Australia, for a “adaptive and prioritized replication scheduling in storage clusters.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”In one implementation, groups of objects may be maintained, each group including one or more objects that are to be replicated at one or more of the storage clusters. The objects may be assigned to the groups based on replication choices where at least some of the objects are assigned to multiple ones of the groups. A priority value may be determined and associated with each of the groups, the priority value of a particular group being determined based on priority values associated with objects within the particular group. The objects may be selected, for replication, in a replication order based on the priority value of the groups and replication of the selected objects may be initiated.“

The patent application was filed on December 23, 2014 (14/582,055).

Client token storage for cross-site request forgery protection
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,104,838) developed by Gajda, Damian, Santa Clara, CA, and Shirriff, Kenneth William, Redwood City, CA, for a “client token storage for cross-site request forgery protection.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods can secure against cross-site request forgery using client-side token storage. A client browser can initiate an action associated with a first web service and generate a token. The token may be stored in client-side storage at the computing device. An indicator of the action may also be stored within the client-side storage. A return link, associated with a passed copy of the token, may be generated. The client may perform the redirect and return to the first web service according to the return link. The passed copy of the token can be extracted from the return link. The indicator of the action and the stored token may be loaded from the client storage. The passed copy of the token and the stored token may be compared. The action according to the indicator of the action may be performed in response to the comparison matching.“

The patent application was filed on November 14, 2012 (13/677,284).

Organizing data in distributed storage system
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,069,835) developed by Dean, Jeffrey Adgate, Palo Alto, CA, Boyer Epstein, Michael James, Brooklyn, NY, Fikes, Andrew, Los Altos, CA, Ghemawat, Sanjay, Mountain View, CA, Hsieh, Wilson Cheng-Yi, Syosset, NY, Lloyd, Alexander, New York, NY, Saito, Yasushi, Szymaniak, Michal Piotr, Mountain View, CA, Kanthak, Sebastian, San Jose, CA, and Taylor, Chris Jorgen, Palo Alto, CA, for a “organizing data in a distributed storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A distributed storage system is provided. The distributed storage system includes multiple front-end servers and zones for managing data for clients. Data within the distributed storage system is associated with a plurality of accounts and divided into a plurality of groups, each group including a plurality of splits, each split being associated with a respective account, and each group having multiple tablets and each tablet managed by a respective tablet server of the distributed storage system. Data associated with different accounts may be replicated within the distributed storage system using different data replication policies. There is no limit to the amount of data for an account by adding new splits to the distributed storage system. In response to a client request for a particular account’s data, a front-end server communicates such request to a particular zone that has the client-requested data and returns the client-requested data to the requesting client.“

The patent application was filed on May 20, 2013 (13/898,411).

Serving encrypted and plain data from low latency non-volatile memory
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,069,776) developed by Taropa, Emanuel, San Jose, CA, for a “serving encrypted and plain data from a low latency non-volatile memory.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for serving encrypted and plain data from a low latency non-volatile memory. One of the methods includes executing a process on a server having a low latency volatile random access memory and a low latency non-volatile memory. The process is associated with an index file stored in the low latency volatile random access memory and encrypted and plain data stored in the low latency non-volatile memory. The process receives a query, finds data necessary to generate a response to the query using the index file, and retrieves the data from the low latency non-volatile memory whether the data is in an encrypted or a plain format. The process provides responses to queries where the responses are generated from a portion of either the encrypted data or the plain data stored in the low latency non-volatile memory.“

The patent application was filed on March 15, 2013 (13/843,871).

Using virtual to physical map for direct user space communication
with data storage device
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,069,658) developed by Borchers, Albert T., Aptos, CA, Gelb, Benjamin S., San Francisco, CA, Norrie, Thomas J., Mountain View, CA, and Swing, Andrew T., Los Gatos, CA, for a “using a virtual to physical map for direct user space communication with a data storage device.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data storage device includes multiple flash memory devices, where each of the flash memory devices are arranged into multiple blocks having multiple pages for storing data. The data storage device includes a memory controller that is operationally coupled with the flash memory devices. The memory controller is configured to receive a virtual to physical memory address translation map from a host device, where a physical memory address includes a physical address for memory on the host device. The memory controller is configured to store the virtual to physical memory address translation map in a memory module on the memory controller, receive commands directly from an application running on the host device, where the commands include virtual memory addresses that refer to the memory on the host device and translate the virtual memory addresses to physical memory addresses using the virtual to physical memory address translation map.“

The patent application was filed on December 10, 2012 (13/709,972).

Bandwidth throttling of virtual disks
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,069,616) developed by Kadatch, Andrew, Redmond, WA, and Khorun, Sergey, Seattle, WA, for a “bandwidth throttling of virtual disks.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for managing resources in a computing system. For virtual hard disk drives supported by multiple physic hard disk drives over a network, artificial throttling of the disk access bandwidth is implemented, such that the resulting latency behavior of each virtual hard disk drive resembles the latency behavior of a corresponding physical hard disk drive emulated by the virtual hard disk drive. In various implementations, the artificial throttling simulates both characteristics of sequential access latencies and random access latencies on a physical hard drive.“

The patent application was filed on September 23, 2011 (13/243,752).

Determining updates for files
based on organization of files on different blocks of storage device
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,053,107) developed by Le, Thieu, Livermore, CA, for a “determining updates for files based on an organization of the files on different blocks of a storage device.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Configurations for only transmitting modified files in a file system update over a network to a target computer system are provided. The target computer system can store a root file system on a storage device. The subject technology determines differences between a previous image of the root file system and a new, (e.g., updated) image of the root file system. When a file has not been updated or modified, the subject technology does not transmit the file in an update over the network to the target computer system. The root file system includes metadata that at least describes the location of each file on the storage device. For a file in which the position is preserved, i.e., unchanged, the location metadata for that file is not changed. The subject technology therefore forgoes transmitting the unmodified metadata over the network.“

The patent application was filed on December 6, 2011 (13/312,949).

Live migration of data store to encrypted form
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,966,283) developed by Shankar, Umesh, Pang, Ruoming, New York, NY, Pflanz, Benjamin Valerian, Fort Lee, NJ, Patel, Sarvar, Montville, NJ, Kindred, Darrell, Columbia, MD, and Samper, Daniel Rebolledo, New York City, NY, for a “systems and methods for live migration of a data store to encrypted form.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”This document describes methods and systems by which a data storage service migrates a volume of stored data from an unencrypted format to an encrypted format while still permitting user access to the data. The encryption process uses migration markers to identify records that have undergone the encryption process. When migration is complete, the service removes the migration markers and retains the encrypted data in a data storage facility.“

The patent application was filed on February 15, 2013 (13/768,207).