Google has a patent on pagerank? If their algorithm was patented, it would be open for anyone to read and understand - just not to use. My understanding is their ranking is something they keep a closely guarded secret, and to apply for a patent on it would be silly.

Or was pagerank something they did early on and I'm mixing up two things.

You got it mixed up. They built Google on the (patented) PageRank algorithm, but have since improved upon it to such a degree that the what they currently use bears little resemblance.

I know less than little about most things, but wouldnt that m ake search engienes compete more, giving us, the users, better results?

I think there's a fine line where on one side inventors cant net a profit without a time-based monopoly but on the other side of this fine line it's just hurting competition.

Sort of. The average search results would have gotten a little better, but only because Excite/Altavista/etc would have poached some key early employees of Google and walked away with their algorithm, which was Googles key advantage back then. So the big incumbents would be able to use PageRank AND their pre-existing market share to destroy google easily. The huge leap forward in search (and it was a huge leap) would have never happened, because their would be no challengers who could match the purchasing power and market share of incumbents

what an absurdly wrongheaded statement, do you really think that Google depended on patent protection to stop others from using PageRank, and even if they did, how could it ever be conclusively proven that PageRank was used by somebody else?

What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google? If Yahoo, LiveSearch and whatever other famous search engine just went ahead and ripped off Google then Google wouldn't be the Google we know now... Proving it shouldn't be any more difficult than asserting any patent. The defendant would have to show how they're ranking pages I would imagine, and if there's an infringement, they're found guilty.

"What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google?"

Because it belongs to Stanford University, not Google.

Under exclusive license by Google. Basically the same as having the patent yourselves

Google's secret sauce has a lot less to do with page rankings and a lot more to do with how to do really cheap and efficient data processing.

So, if they had really crappy, but fast search results, they would be just as successful? That doesn't hold merit at all

Don't be silly. I'm not saying search results aren't important; I'm saying they're not difficult. The specifics of Google's algorithm have to stay secret to make it harder to game them, but the real "secret sauce" is the stuff they don't talk much about: custom built networking switches, smart power grids, and clever software like Map/Reduce. I bet R&D spends a lot more on that stuff than on figuring out how to improve ranking order.