| I am disturbed by the lack of faith in open source among the readers here. I mean, I understand some skepticism but this, to me, is pretty extreme IP-fetishism. It's perfectly understandable. Lots of money is made in the existing paradigm and so many of you have incentive to believe it's the most rational system. Besides, hard to imagine Google's doing something wrong, right? But the argument that "the only people this will help is spammers"? Really? Are the only people helped by open cryptographic protocols those who look to decipher traffic? "They have every right to keep it secret and profit off of it." Let's allow this for a moment. We've still got a false dichotomy. Making it public will not deprive them of their profit. First, incredible marketing coup. Does anyone else remember how much of Google's initial strength came from its rabid fans? This would do a lot of re-energize that base. Second, are there going to be new startups which can effectively compete with Google, even given its algorithm? How are they going to provide a better experience, or serve the volume of traffic, or index a larger amount of pages with the same algorithm with fewer resources? Third, who says they have to authorize competitors to use it? This is I think one of the more interesting points. They could release the algorithm but license it only for non-commercial use for anyone not themselves. Ridiculous? Because Microsoft would violate such a deal anyhow? Because the algorithm could simply be reimplemented? Perhaps. But it would be another roadblock. Fourth, why do we continue to believe that Google's strength comes from proprietary code? Why do we not recognize that its strength comes from mindshare, user experience, and quality of execution? None of which would be negatively affected by releasing the source. Perhaps Google would face heightened competition as a result of releasing its algorithm. Perhaps this would outweigh the benefits of doing so. But there would be significant good which would result, including public feedback which would make it significantly harder for spammers to be successful. But I'm just a foaming-at-the-mouth open source radical. And I'm sure history is on your collective side. If there's anything we've learnt from a hundred years or so of Computer Science (overestimate if you only count actual programming, underestimate if you allow Babbage as you should), it's surely that secrecy is what drives innovation, right? |