[joesb]

"You can reverse engineer binary applications but you cannot reverse engineer the cloud."

Umm, yes you can. It's all series of HTTP calls. Problem is not with reverse engineering, it's getting people to use your new reverse-engineered service with zero other users to provide content. You can reverse engineer Youtube and have all its features and API, you just don't get all the content and community in it.

[wslh]

No, you can't: a service that shutdowns can't be recovered, and you can't learn about the advanced Google algorithms just scraping their search engine.

One of the core ethical purposes of reverse engineering is to leave the door open for competition.