[guitarbill]

On the other hand, they disclosed those documents in the court proceeding (I'm assuming they didn't have to, if they can withdraw it now). So it seems the court is just asking them to follow normal discovery procedure, in allowing the other side to actually look at the facts. Google's barrister should've probably expected something like this.

This case is highly interesting though, and should give pause to any company operating off opaque algorithms it can't explain. Personally, I don't object to this, just like personal data, it isn't all upsides - if you're profiting of these things, you need to accept the downsides, too.

To be honest, I'm more surprised Google can't lay out why they were de-ranked in some other way. While it might give some insight, surely it's better than revealing the entire algo? (edit: I guess that might open the door to further, exploratory lawsuits)