Even more ironic: Stanford got a significant amount of shares from Google for allowing Google exclusive license.

Also, it is a mathematical algorithm in every sense of the word. A lot of patents aren't.

As far as I can tell all software patents are patents on math. Here is one example of a software patent reduced to mathematics and logic the extends it to all software patents: http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931...