41–50 of 70 posts
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.
After reading the comments at cdixson.org by the author and reading openness article at Google, it seems like author is simply saying: "I agree they won't open it. But then they should stop talking sactimoniously about openness." which I agree with as well.
Here is an interesting perspective: "And millions of websites will have to continue blindly relying on a small group of anonymous engineers in charge of the secret algorithm that determines their fate." Have you ever been delisted by Google? Is there a transparent process to get back on the list? Perhaps transparency is what Google needs the most at the moment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I actually think that more companies should give dividends.
I can see why companies like to have billion dollar war chests, but at some point you have to wonder when enough is enough. I mean, even Microsoft was forced to start paying dividends. Then again, their stock price has been pretty flat for the past few years, so that might be the only reason to hold it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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.
Agreed. After reading the comments at cdixson.org by the author and reading openness article at Google, it seems like author is simply saying: "I agree they won't open it. But then they should stop talking sactimoniously about openness." which I agree with as well. Here is an interesting perspective: "And millions of websites will have to continue blindly relying on a small group of anonymous engineers in charge of t…
Absolutely, and not only on the search engine part of it, Adwords/Adsense are extremely opaque and as a publisher continuously give you the feeling you're being screwed without any chance to prove that for lack of information.
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> If the algorithm was open it would be trivial to create sites with artificially high rankings I don't necessarily think this is true. Sites that have high page rank, do so because other sites of high value link to them. Even if Google open sourced their search engine, spam sites would still have a hard time getting high quality inbound links. The reputable and high ranking sites wouldn't have any increased incentiv…
Absolutely. I've worked in several contracted roles within online marketing and I've heard some awful advice from self-proclaimed SEO gurus about how to achieve a high rank for keywords on Google. A lot of what achiving high ranks is about is common sense and as Google improves their algorithm fewer tricks work. Anything past a simple competitive analysis, keyphrase analysis and a backlink analysis on you and your co…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
See Google's S1 (IPO) filing for reference: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125040...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> communism being one of the more spectacular failures of open Wait, what? Communism is a spectacular failure of centralized planning over the entire economy. It has nothing to do with open or closed in principle, and in every implementation it has been aggressively closed in terms of information flows and decision making.
Wow, and here I was thinking it was a form of government.
Communism in principle has absolutely nothing to do with the flow of information and/or decision making, and its implementations have only very little to do with its basic ideas.
A true communistic government has never even been tried, we've only seen a 'new boss same as the old boss' approach to communism with one batch of fat cats replacing another.
Google is a business. Their job, legally defined, is to create value (aka profit) for its shareholders. A more open web has helped Google, but opening up its search algorithms, a cornerstone to Google's growth, is just ludicrous and bad business. Compared to a lot of other companies (Apple, Microsoft, nearly every other tech giant), they are an open company. It's already great that they realize there's value in an Op…
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.
Not to say it's interpreted correctly, but that is where the 'meme' stems from. If people quoted primary sources this might be more widely understood.