Last time I checked, Google search doesn’t search web page source code. (There’s a “Search Code” feature, but it searches other kinds of code, not web page source code.)

This bugged me at first — I wanted to find pages made in Dreamweaver, by searching for fragments of Dreamweaver-specific code — but I’ve come to assume that Google doesn’t want us to search web page source code.

If we could search the source code, what’s to stop us from writing our own ranking algorithms, bypassing Google’s rankings altogether?

With the adsense/adwords programs – let’s face it Google is a business and they want to make money. The are a public company and have to keep profits up for shareholders.

Keeping the web open has nothing to do with sharing proprietary code.

Don’t be evil just means don’t screw over the public.

Aurini (and many others), you are conflating Google’s search algorithm with a piece of software. Software tends to benefit from openness because, yes, it allows more people to find and fix bugs and holes. Knowing the software’s source code does not necessarily allow you to “game” the program to the detriment of others. A search algorithm is not something that always benefits from an open source community providing feedback – there may or may not be flaws in Google’s algorithm, but if they let everyone know all the details of it, everyone would be able to use sneaky tricks to game the system to get ahead.

Read the article. It says Open Systems, Open Standards: use these always, without exception (and where there is no standard, create your own, and make it open for everyone else). Open Source: all developments are presumed to be open source-able until proven otherwise.

This is the polar opposite of the way most large corporations guide their developers. In most large organisations, the standing orders are “whenever you develop something, always consider if it should be patented”.

As Rob says, this is not about protecting users, it’s about protecting revenue. Which is fine, but just tell the damn truth. It’s not that complicated or difficult.

Circular reasoning. It’s possible they’d make much more money by keeping some of their open products closed. Admittedly, none comes to mind, but 10 years ago, who thought there was money in search?

Do they mean “open” as in the Android Market, where users can not download the client or can not access it if their Android phone or device doesn’t come with it pre-installed – i assume that means the manufacturers paid Google for that right, or that Google means to get money from the future manufacturers?

Or do they mean “open” as in sending C&D letters to developers that make their products better and more useful?

They used to at one time , but putting search terms into the code became a way to spam the results so Google stopped letting you search for things like javascript routines.

It’s a drag if you are looking to find code, but not so much if you are looking for documentation.

That’s not to say the heads of Google are bad people – this is just how capitalism works. It reduces everyones ideals and aspirations to functions of a market equation, and usually forces us to drop them in favor of better performance. There’s no reason to believe Google would be any different, and there’s no reason to believe we would do any different in their position.

Doesn’t mean they should get a free pass, but as the dozens of unimpressed commenters demonstrate, the problem is deeply systemic.

Also, being a fan of all the free, no-obligation, open stuff Google gives me, I might say their secure revenue stream is itself indirectly but greatly beneficial to an open internet. I mean, until they officially become evil.

In D&D, everyone is playing to win largely the same prize. Get the treasure, slay the dragon, etc.

In the Internet, people have disparate goals. People develop web sites for all sorts of reasons. Some people are playing the game, some aren’t. Most top hits on google aren’t due to SEO, but rather just good content and popularity.

However, if the search code were made public, the tilt of what Google pointed at would be shifted massively towards those people who took the time to study and understand the algorithms, and away from the organically good ranking content.

In a good example of game theory, web sites in competitive fields would have to devote more and more of their time to this SEO with diminishing results.

The end result would be less organic relevance of top results and people spending ever more of their finite time and resources trying to game the system instead of creating valuable content.

I’m all for open source, having recently zapped the windows partition on my only PC. And I’m not exactly Google’s #1 fan. But, google has both a right and a very good justification to keep some of these core technologies secret.

And yes, they should use ‘closed’ rather than ‘open’. To make my point really really clear -> “Mostly not a rapist” is still “a rapist”. Or if you prefer a less obnoxious approach “mostly bug free” is still “buggy”.

You seem to view it as a hard edged dichotomy between a utopian, free-code collective where every piece of software is open to everyone, and a villainous, clenched-fist monolith of corporate tyranny. I don’t think those are our only options, though.

Where do I sem to believe that? I’m just being a fascist about people using sunny words to hide their motives. I’m not saying they’re evil… I’m just saying they’re patting themslves on the backs a bit too hard while missing the mark they’re bragging about hitting.

Not unlike how I feel about people using “free country” to describe a nation who deprives people of due process.

It IS semantics, but those are important, ESPECIALLY to a computer company. GIGO, after all.

Not all google acquisitions have a similar story/purpose, take reCaptcha for example, lol.

exactly.

But in a world where the public’s spending for a debased holy day makes or breaks the entire economy a lie has to be a REALLY BIG LIE for it to be called a lie, and honesty has to be coated in sugar for it to be anything other than an attack.

Is this post a statement of fact or a condemnation?

Sure open source is great. All of my primary programs (except my OS) are open source: FireFox, ThunderBird, Filezilla, VLC, Open Office. But just because I love getting open source software, that works excellently, for free – doesn’t mean I think all code should be public/free.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m almost always a proponent of open-source. But I have to admit that it makes sense that they want to keep their revenue generators close to the vest.

If they opened up Google Search, then people would immediately know how to game the system to get their pages at the forefront of the search lists. And if they opened up Google Ads, people would immediately know how to game the system to illegitimately pay less or get paid more.

Now, it could be said that if they built their products well enough, those events could be avoided, certainly. But I don’t blame them for taking extra care.

To be fair, the following two sentences do somewhat justify this statement:

>>The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in. Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to “game” our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.< <

On the surface this reasoning seems to make sense, even if the person making the argument has outside motivations, but I've been reading alot of Schneier lately (http://www.schneier.com/). The first thought that springs to mind is whether or not this is the locksmith’s code of silence all over again? Namely that if Google keeps its algorithm secret your average user has the presumption of fairness and is confidant that noone is juking it – while in reality there are most certainly people that have figured it out, and to them the system is no more difficult than a two-pin tumbler, something I’ve picked with home-made aluminum tools.