Neal K. Shah: Google just patented the right to replace your website with its own

I built my company on a simple bet, that if you created something genuinely useful for families in crisis, the internet would help them find you. For years, that bet has paid off. When a daughter in Raleigh is awake at 2 a.m. caring for her elderly mother with dementia, desperately searching for “senior caregiver near me” or “in-home senior care” to get help, she quickly finds the CareYaya caregiving platform at the top of the search rankings. She clicks through to our website, researches our caregiving solutions, reads stories from the families we’ve helped, and is soon connected with affordable, quality care help. That entire journey, from fear to relief, begins with a simple click to our website.

But a few weeks ago, Google quietly patented a system that could make that click completely disappear.

Without much press coverage, the…