

The meaning of open - pavs
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html

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zmimon
Nice read, but this is a bit shameless:

>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.

Convenient, huh? Open just happens to win except for the part that
strategically keeping closed makes Google gazillions of dollars. And claiming
search is highly competitive? Google has more than 4 x the market share of
their nearest competitor.

~~~
seldo
His claim that opening their algorithm would expose them to gaming of the
system is hard to rebut, however. Search spam is bad enough already.

~~~
alain94040
s/search spam/windows viruses/

Would you make the argument that Windows is more secure because its code is
not open?

~~~
donaq
They're not really analogous. You can get a copy of Windows and poke at it
until you figure out exactly how it works. You could even theoretically
disassemble the machine code. You can't, however, get your hands on a Google
box (or cluster).

~~~
bad_user
Oh, but you can get your hands on a Google GSA box. Not to mention that
security by obscurity is most effectively breached through trial and error ...
there's nothing stopping you from gaming Google's algorithm right now (and
many spammers are doing just that).

I don't know why the parent got downvoted, but the situations are similar. If
you can't secure your code while being open about your methods, obscurity
won't help in the long term.

~~~
donaq
It doesn't seem likely that Google GSA uses the same algo as their web search.

 _Not to mention that security by obscurity is most effectively breached
through trial and error_

Really? I'm not a security expert, but isn't brute force impractical except in
the smallest of search spaces?

 _there's nothing stopping you from gaming Google's algorithm right now (and
many spammers are doing just that)_

True, but the situation would probably be even worse if the algorithm were
open, wouldn't you say?

 _If you can't secure your code while being open about your methods, obscurity
won't help in the long term._

Also true, but as other people have already commented, this is more like a
matter of policy than security. And besides, some methods can be open because
they're intrinsically hard to get around, (e.g. crypto algorithms: cos it's
math, baby) and others because they're expensive (e.g. I don't know, hardware
requiring expensive/rare materials?). However, web search algorithms are
horses of another color, aren't they? I hesitate to say for certain, but it's
possible that there is no search algorithm that cannot be gamed if it is
known. If that is the case, then security by obscurity, while not being an
ideal solution, may in fact be the _only_ option.

------
seldo
There is much to admire here, and his admittedly grandiose words about the
open being the future of government, commerce, entertainment and culture
generally sound great to the optimist in all of us. I have a few minor
quibbles with conflating their Android efforts with everything else, but in
general this is an admirable policy eloquent expressed and stoutly defended.

I think the most important part is this: "All other things being equal, a 10
percent increase in share or a 10 percent increase in industry value should
lead to the same outcome. ... As long as we contribute a steady stream of
great products we will prosper along with the entire ecosystem. We may get a
smaller piece, but it will come from a bigger pie."

I wish more companies had the courage to take this position, but it's so much
easier to accept a guaranteed slice of a known pie.

------
count
Using Android as an example of an 'Open' system and giving control to the
users is fairly disingenuous. Parts and chunks are 'open', with huge, critical
chunks being walled off for Google and OHA member eyes only.

------
pavs
The most interesting part for me:

"So if you are trying to grow an entire industry as broadly as possible, open
systems trump closed. And that is exactly what we are trying to do with the
Internet. Our commitment to open systems is not altruistic. Rather it's good
business, since an open Internet creates a steady stream of innovations that
attracts users and usage and grows the entire industry."

------
there
somewhat off-topic: if your weblog hosts content from multiple authors, put
the author's name at the top of the post. reading "I" and not knowing who "I"
is is confusing and having to scroll to the bottom to find out and then back
up again is annoying.

~~~
seldo
"Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management" is
the second line after the title.

~~~
wglb
I only see it at the end of the entire post . . .

~~~
seldo
Hum. Somehow, I got redirected to:

[http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-
op...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html)

Which is the same post, on a different Google blog, with a different layout.

------
sloppyfocus
It would be really awesome if google were to open source mapreduce, chubby,
and bigtable -- these are tools that would allow innovation at greater scale,
and it's not clear that any open tools are of the same quality.

------
extension
An application for which you have no source _or_ distributable code and can
only use through a dumb terminal while it runs on somebody else's computer is
about as far from "open" as you can get.

