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Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

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Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#21

Post by idlewords »

mattmanser wrote: post #15
showerst wrote: post #2

The notion that being 'committed' to open source means that a company should give away everything of value is ludicrous. Google came up with great software that makes millions of peoples' lives easier, and they have every right to keep it secret and profit off of it. The zealous idea that open source and trade secrets cannot coexist is detrimental to the open source movement as a whole, in my opinion.

I think you're missing the point, the article is pretty much a direct response to: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html (submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008908 ) In it a Google open source zealot rants wildly about openess being ultimate, apart from search algorithms which should be closed. It also fails to mention all the times open has failed (communism being one of the m…

How on earth was communism an example of "open"?

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#24

Post by roc »

swombat wrote: post #5

That is a completely ridiculous point to make. Come on, be serious here. What would be the benefit to anyone except for spammers, if Google open-sourced their algorithms? It's a lose-lose option. Google loses some money, we lose a lot of search engine accuracy, and spammers gain new ways to screw around with search results. And does anyone gain from it? Not really. At this point, Google's supremacy is due just as muc…

The stated goal isn't to help other search engines; it's to get the community to help Google improve, for the good of all its users.

The theory goes: if you let more people look at the algorithm, they can suggest better answers than Google alone, to thwart the spammers who are gaming the system either way.

But I suspect the real goal has more to do with the deep suspicion that Google can or does do a significant bit of hand-tweaking. And these people want to force the algorithm into the open to either end or curtail that.

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#25

Post by roc »

mbreese wrote: post #17
tome wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their job, legally defined, is to create value (aka profit) for its shareholders. This is a meme I see a lot, but never with any evidence. That the board has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders I can understand. That it would have a legal obligation to create value, well, I think that would be hard to define, and I have never seen any evidence for the existence of this obligation.

In the context of a publicly traded company this is the definition of fiduciary. The company has sold stock to investors with the sole purpose of increasing the value of the stock. Therefore, it is up to the board to make decisions that reflect this duty. You can argue about the timeline (short versus long-term growth), but you can't say that there isn't a legal obligation to attempt to increase value.

> "The company has sold stock to investors with the sole purpose of increasing the value of the stock."

I know they're not popular, or exciting like a stock value swing, but dividends still exist, right?

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#26

Post by lacker »

(I used to work in the Search Quality division at Google.)

Security by obscurity is a bad analogy here. The problem is that Google's algorithms are not mathematically perfect, in the sense of cryptography. Instead, they merely statistically tend to find good results. You can't find bugs just by looking at source code. You have to statistically analyze the effects of any proposed changes.

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#27

Post by stanleydrew »

amix wrote: post #9

I would love if they open-sourced their infrastructure tools such as GFS, BigTable and Map-Reduce tools. Most of these tools are built using open-source technology such as Linux.

Apache's Hadoop (http://hadoop.apache.org/) has open-sourced implementations of those tools.

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#28

Post by jedc »

mattmanser wrote: post #15
showerst wrote: post #2

The notion that being 'committed' to open source means that a company should give away everything of value is ludicrous. Google came up with great software that makes millions of peoples' lives easier, and they have every right to keep it secret and profit off of it. The zealous idea that open source and trade secrets cannot coexist is detrimental to the open source movement as a whole, in my opinion.

I think you're missing the point, the article is pretty much a direct response to: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html (submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008908 ) In it a Google open source zealot rants wildly about openess being ultimate, apart from search algorithms which should be closed. It also fails to mention all the times open has failed (communism being one of the m…

It was written by Jonathan Rosenberg, who's a Senior Vice President for Product Management, and on the top management committee at Google. That doesn't quite meet my personal description of an "open source zealot", though he's clearly quite passionate about it.

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#29

Post by showerst »

mattmanser wrote: post #15
showerst wrote: post #2

The notion that being 'committed' to open source means that a company should give away everything of value is ludicrous. Google came up with great software that makes millions of peoples' lives easier, and they have every right to keep it secret and profit off of it. The zealous idea that open source and trade secrets cannot coexist is detrimental to the open source movement as a whole, in my opinion.

I think you're missing the point, the article is pretty much a direct response to: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html (submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008908 ) In it a Google open source zealot rants wildly about openess being ultimate, apart from search algorithms which should be closed. It also fails to mention all the times open has failed (communism being one of the m…

Thanks for the link, that helps put the post into a bit more context.

That said, I think the author's point is still wrong. As a community, we have to understand that these open systems are an enabler of progress, some of which will undoubtedly be proprietary. Part of openness is understanding that you're not locking people into using this stuff, and they're not locked in to how they use it.

I don't see it as hypocritical that a business can talk about being open and how critical it is to give back, while still keeping trade secrets to pay the bills.

I recently saw the CEO of the Economist group speak about journalism, and one thing he said (paraphrasing) was that the best defense of journalistic impartiality in the modern age is to turn a healthy (and diversified) profit. The subtext was that you can then risk offending any given party by doing good reporting without the appearance of favoritism, and without having a corporate (or nonprofit) master to please.

In the same sense I think that the best defense of free software is to allow companies to use it on their own terms, and give back when they can/will. The most useful open source projects are used (and likely abused) ad-nauseum, and trying to limit any company, even one that preaches hypocritically about open source is a recipe for them to tell the community to shove it and go hand money to .

While it's fairly easy to preach the open-source gospel to fellow programmers and nerds that appreciate the value of this stuff, it's business people and non-tech-literates that oftentimes allow the checks to be signed, and the open source community needs to look to them like a group of enablers, not inflexible idealogues.

Re: Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

#30

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