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Google has received a patent for the technique known as MapReduce. The patent 7,650,331 applied for in 2004, is entitled "System and method for efficient large-scale data processing" and covers the process of mapping work to multiple processors and then reducing the intermediate results from these processors to a final result. The technique is used widely by data mining companies, for example, in Yahoo's search infrastructure, Amazon's Elastic MapReduce service and IBM's M2 platform. The Apache Hadoop project is the most prominent open source implementation of the technique.
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Given that Google has not pursued patent infringements and appear to have been building a defensive patent portfolio, it is believed by some that Google is ensuring that it is not possible for a patent troll to obtain a similar patent and use it against Google and others.
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