{
  "patent_number": "US 6266060",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Browsers Automatically Choose Your Start Page Based on History",
  "original_title": "Menu management mechanism that displays menu items based on multiple heuristic factors",
  "summary": "An IBM patent from 1998 that describes how a web browser can automatically pick which website to load first based on your past browsing habits.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes a method for a web browser to automatically select and display an 'initial' web page as soon as the browser finishes starting up. It uses a list of historical web page selections to determine which page should be shown first. The system uses 'ranking control' to decide this order, which can be either automatic (based on factors like frequency or recency of visits) or manual (user-defined). Essentially, it turns your browser's homepage into a dynamic list that updates itself based on where you spend your time.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover general search engine result ranking algorithms.",
    "Does not cover browser extensions that manually set a static homepage URL.",
    "Does not cover the underlying network protocols used to fetch the web page.",
    "Does not cover tabbed browsing or session restoration features."
  ],
  "filed": "1998-07-23",
  "granted": "2001-07-24",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "International Business Machines Corp",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/international-business-machines-corp",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Steven William Roth",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/steven-william-roth"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 95,
  "tags": [
    "software",
    "consumer_electronics"
  ],
  "abstract": "The mechanisms of the present invention provide comprehensive heuristic menu arrangement control by providing several discrete,. yet complementary, features. One feature is automatic menu arrangement for both fixed and variable content menus based on a combination of frequency of selection and recency of selection. Another feature is the consideration of time of day for menu arrangement. Time of day is used in two different ways. First, time of day is used as a heuristic factor (i.e., in the same way as recency and frequency) to affect the automatic arrangement of menu items. The second time of day feature allows the user to affect the order that certain menu items are presented during a user specified time period.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/6266060/windows-desktop",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/6266060/windows-desktop/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US6266060",
  "relatedPatents": []
}