Patents are required to include prior art. If they are mentioning it as prior art that means they are explicitly claiming that it is not the thing being patented, but that it builds on it in a non-obvious way.
I mean this informationally; I'm not a software patent fan, but let us damn them for what they are, not for what we think they are.
>The invention provides an evaluation system for reliably evaluating large amounts of content. The evaluation system is managed by a primary authority that designates one or more contributing authorities by delegating to each a specific quantity of authority. Each contributing authority may in turn designate and delegate authority to one or more additional contributing authorities, subject to the restriction that the total quantity of authority delegated does not exceed the quantity of authority the contributing authority was itself delegated. Each contributing authority, and optionally the primary authority itself, may evaluate one or more portions of content by associating a rating with each evaluated portion of content. A composite rating for a particular portion of content may then be determined based upon the ratings associated with the portion of content. Preferably, the ratings are combined in a manner that affords a higher priority to the ratings provided by contributing authorities to which a greater quantity of authority was delegated.
Isn't that more or less exactly how the Slashdot moderation system was initially seeded?
This is more or less how the Slashdot tagging system works, but more advanced than how the moderation system works. But still, abstracts in patent filings are generally oversimplifications.
I think one could argue that the Google system foretold by your tagging and moderation system and thus should fail the novelty test.
To your question about bonuses though, when I worked there they were aggressive at getting things filed and just filing was a bonus (didn't have to issue, if it issued that was another (bigger) bonus). Someone once pointed out the not so strange correlation between patent filings and needing a bit of extra money for Christmas shopping :-) So not to worry the Googlers in question were well compensated, enough for many many beers.
That correlation doesn't sound plausible, given the long and unpredictable lead times in the process.
I did an IDF for something June 2010 or so, the patent application was eventually filed in April 2011, and I just got the bonus this week. (And to top it off, I'd left Google in the meanwhile, so getting that bonus at all was a bit of a surprise).
