There’s plenty of mousetraps in the world and there’s always room for better ones right? As machinists we often find ourselves needing a tool or seeing how to improve one. (Yes, amazing things come to mind while standing at a machine for hours on end.) So what to do when the next big idea comes along and you want to take it to the next level? Well, you might want to turn to Google.

For the past 18 months, the world’s largest search engine has added a new feature called Google Patent Search. This allows for quick and powerful searches of patents. If you really do have an idea that you might even consider patenting, the first step is to search patents to see if someone hasn’t thought of it first. The old US Patent and Trademark Office relied on an archaic and extremely user-unfriendly interface for searching patents and trademarks – an expected product for a government agency. Their system is so unfriendly that capitalization and syntax protocols nearly required users to learn a new programming language just to use the system for advanced searches. That system is now dead thanks to free enterprise and the private sector… oh, and Google.

For years Google’s strategy is to provide free tools to the public to attract and retain users of the Google search engine. Google Adwords (The small ads on the right side of your search results) are the cash cow for the search engine titan. As long as one of their products continues to funnel users to Google Adwords, money is being made.

So, use the Google Patent Search and cast your vote for the private sector and tell the government that their systems and management suck. Hmm, and why do we want them to take over our healthcare system?