Don’t you just hate it when someone on social media spoils your favorite show or a new movie? Google wants to help you with that.
Google was awarded a new patent on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that could help you avoid spoilers online. The system would require you give the company access to services such as Netflix so it could see if you’ve watched the season finale of House of Cards yet. Once it knows this information, it would block any references to the events in that episode until you’ve had time to watch it.
What isn’t mentioned in the patent, however, is what services this would work with. Seeing as Twitter and Facebook are the most common ways people accidentally stumble into spoilers, we’re not quite sure how a third party service such as Google would be able to do much about those instances. It also appears to be strictly based around text, so if someone posted an image of a big spoiler, you probably would still end up seeing it.
As with all patents, there is no guarantee that Google will ever act upon this filing. For all we know it could just go into its ever growing chest of unused patents, but there are sure to be many people out there who would love to see this happen before the new season of Game of Thrones debuts this Sunday. (Trust us, it won’t be ready in time).
Source: USPTO