

Google’s ‘Meaning of Open’ - seldo
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/22/open

======
mpk
First of all, I still think Google is a cool company and contributing a lot to
the open source ecosystem.

But Google advocating openness and doing so by talking about data, protocols
and software is disingenuous. Google's core business is pushing advertising
using search and data mining. Things that they are anything but open about.
Also, Google regularly open-sources software (which is great), but doesn't
make any real effort to further develop that software using open-source
communities. Have you tried to push a patch back into a Google open source
project? (If so, write a blog post and link it here, please). Development on
open-source projects in Google happens inside Google, with changes
periodically being pushed to the outside world. For the most part this is a
one-way street. Still not complaining here, btw - community development is
tricky and I don't see other companies really make an effort to release
control to 'communities' (hello Sun/Java!).

Google's open-source efforts only indirectly affect their bottom line. What
they really do is make it harder for their competitors and garner public
goodwill.

Google also makes a big deal out of control. That users control their own data
and can take it out of the Googlesphere at any time. Great! Can I have Google
remove all the personal data they've collected on me that I didn't explicitly
give them? Uh, sorry - no go there. All that really personal stuff doesn't
fall under your control.

I'd expect any company to behave in such a manner (or worse, actually), but
Google presents itself as a beacon of goodness, openness and generally never
Evil. As such we hold them to a higher standard which they can't live up to.
So a sanctimonious sermon on being good and open just hits some people the
wrong way.

Not me, of course. I'm a bit of a cynic and get a few giggles out of a shot of
blatant hypocrisy.

~~~
swolchok
It's not timely at all, but I maintained the 64-bit patch for Gears for a few
months. Upstream didn't want to support it and wouldn't release it as
"unsupported" for whatever reason.

------
andreyf
_And please don’t worry your pretty little minds about things like Google’s
search or ad algorithms or the specific details of how its data centers work_

Secrecy about search and ad algorithms are understandable - opening both would
negatively impact their end-users. Regarding the the structure of their data
centers, this charge is just plain false. Google is significantly more open
about the structure of their computation than I would have ever imagined them
to be, see:

[http://friendfeed.com/paul/944f24c4/great-systems-
presentati...](http://friendfeed.com/paul/944f24c4/great-systems-presentation-
by-jeff-dean-i)

and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=949301>

~~~
kneath
I don't think Gruber's _upset_ that Google isn't open about these things —
it's more than they claim to be open about everything, but clearly aren't.
He's calling Rosenberg out on his propaganda-like march of "Google is always
open no matter what"

~~~
jfager
But Rosenberg's blog post never says "Google is always open no matter what".
Relevant quotes:

 _These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren't there, but
I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between
reality and aspiration._

and

 _While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all
Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which
promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting
locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up
the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users.
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.

So as you are building your product or adding new features, stop and ask
yourself: Would open sourcing this code promote the open Internet? Would it
spur greater user, advertiser, and partner choice? Would it lead to greater
competition and innovation?_

~~~
lg
I think the actual argument is bad anyway. Open-sourcing their product is a
bad idea because malicious people will read the code and exploit its flaws?
This is security by obscurity and it will not promote the open internet. I
don't think it's wrong but it's not altruistic either.

~~~
andreyf
Yes, open sourcing how their search algorithm works would destroy the
relevance of their search rankings. There's a multi-billion SEO market reverse
engineering those algorithms.

~~~
gaius
Right, but there isn't a multi-billion-dollar market in reverse engineering
AES, because it's published. And we all use it and it's fine - publication
hasn't weakened it at all.

~~~
nvoorhies
AES does something completely different though. AES wants to make an
insignificant change to the input result in a disproportionate change in the
output.

Any kind of scoring system where scoring ended up being essentially random
like this would be useless. And any scoring system that's useful and open will
tell you just how to increase your score.

------
gfunk911
I don't understand the hate at this memo. Isn't it a fact that Google is much
more open and a much more prolific contributor to the open source community
than its main competitors?

~~~
houseabsolute
Humans have a biological distaste for hypocrisy and bullshit, even if the
entity spouting them is generally better than those against which it is being
compared.

~~~
Herring
So what you're saying is don't commit to anything unless you're perfect. Got
it.

~~~
houseabsolute
What I'm saying is that humans might react more negatively to your failings
than you might expect if you believed humans were coldly rational beings,
especially if those failings conflict directly with what you say you believe.

Honestly I thought this was common knowledge.

~~~
Herring
You mean "percieved" failings. I think they should have put the point
concerning their search and ads products in bold & at the top.

In my experience ad-hom attacks are a knee-jerk reaction to an argument that
isnt easily refuted. From your language it sounded like you agree with the
attacks.

------
numbeast
Google's recent post 'defining openness' seems to be drawing a lot of
criticism from Hacker News, both directly in comments, and indirectly in the
tone of articles that are posted.

First, please recognize that this in an internal memo we are getting a glimpse
of. It's a "Hey guys, I know we've been talking a lot about open, here's what
I think you should strive to put into a product if you're going to use open to
describe the product."

You think it makes Google look perfect? This is an _internal memo_! He's
talking to the troops, have you ever heard a pep talk that started with "We
kinda failed on that do no evil thing didn't we?"?

Second, the author specifically mentions why Google doesn't open up certain
things, it wouldn't be beneficial. If you don't agree with his reasoning, then
fine, but at least we know the reasoning (although it's not hard to figure out
on your own).

I simply cannot understand the kind of person that gets angry at Google when
they open source some products but not others. How many products has Microsoft
open sourced? Yes Google's motives are based on profit, all of our motives
are. The point is I'm excited for Android, Go, and Chrome. They have raised
the bar in quality software and I couldn't care less how ads find their way to
my blog or why Wikipedia is the first search result on any topic.

~~~
bradbeattie
An internal memo put on a publicly accessible blog ceases to be internal. It
becomes part of PR.

~~~
mpk
Internal memos appear on publicly accessible blogs all the time :)

But in this case they put it on the official company blog, and _that_ makes it
PR.

------
hubb
why are we even discussing a small rant like this? if we're to discuss
rosenberg's note, maybe that should be the link instead.

~~~
storborg
Personally, I think Gruber did a pretty good job of distilling it.

<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html>

------
storborg
I think their implicit assertion that a transparent advertising market is bad
for the public is completely false and self-serving. Let's be honest folks,
Google's ad market is their biggest product, by FAR.

An opaque market serves only to push each customer as close as possible to
their maximum price and benefit Google as much as possible, while providing
the consumer (even a very inquisitive tech-minded consumer) no insight
whatsoever about how much companies are willing to pay for their eyeballs.

------
ErrantX
I cant but help feeling that the author (who I usually find quite effusive)
has read the HN/[insert other news site here] thread, scanned the article
briefly and then ranted.

I'd have expected something a bit more insightful here :( (regardless of if he
is right/wrong)

------
jellicle
Now republish the same article on an Apple blog and see what John Gruber
thinks of it.

~~~
mcav
He doesn't blindly praise Apple. Read DF with less prejudice and you'd spot
many posts where he decries Apple.

------
bioinformatics
I bet he's a fan of Apple's model of openness, right?

~~~
eli
He's been a pretty outspoken critic of Apple app store policies

~~~
jbellis
Really? Because every post I've seen where he acknowledges app store
shortcomings ends something like "But Phil is a really great guy and he
promises to make things better soon, so Apple is still awesome."

~~~
eli
Yes, exactly. He clearly likes Apple but is still willing to call them out
when they do terrible things. Which is the opposite of what the parent comment
was implying.

