Google files for patent on automated status updates to other social networks

Google wants a patent on a method for collecting messages from other social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, and letting users provide an automated response to them.

In the dystopian novel The Circle, Google and Facebook have merged with other big tech companies to create a single, all-seeing and all-knowing social network. The work is fiction but a new patent application published last week makes the situation slightly less far-fetched.