Open source implementation of Google PageRank

It did that with every query that I tried.

It's not illegal to implement a patent that you don't own. Part of the whole "deal" of a patent, is that in exchange for exclusivity of it's commercial exploitation, you have to reveal it for other people to examine and experiment with. So it is entirely legal for someone to take a patent, implement it in a lab and screw around with it.

You can't start selling it though, or exploit it in any commercial way. Google might have a case against you if you implemented their patent and had ads on the resulting site, or used the search feature to get traffic to something else you were selling, etc.

It used to be that manufacturers searching for a new product would review all the patents that had expired that year, looking for a good idea that was never executed or marketed correctly. I think it is evidence of the complete brokenness of the current patent system, that no one bothers to do that anymore. If a patent doesn't describe anything anyone would ever want to do, well enough that they can take the patent as instructions on how to do it, then it is not a patent.

I think most software and business method patents are worthless. They are not only bad in the sense that Stallman and other anti-patent crusaders hate them, although those guys are correct, they are worthless in that the business or individual could get more return if he had the $7,000 to $15,000 he spent getting the patent in hand.

I think Patents and Closed source proprietary software is an Oxymoron.