Google has been granted a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office for a system which will work to block TV and movie spoilers for web users.
The proposed system would identify and hide content containing spoilers about TV shows, books and movies and remove them from users’ social media feeds until they are up to date. The content would be blurred by default, but would be accessible if the user clicked through a ‘possible spoiler’ warning.
For example, the system will track all the episodes of a show that users have watched and will automatically censor content in a user’s feed if the post is about an episode the user hasn’t seen.
A Google spokesman has already warned people not to get too excited about the service, saying “We hold patents on a variety of ideas, some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t.”
Furthermore, the search giant has also not specified how it would integrate the new system if it ever launches, whether it will work with third-party services like Facebook and Twitter to implement the feature, or make it exclusive to Google+.
Google is expected to announce plans for future devices and services at its I/O developer conference next month.
