Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They should focus on trying to be innovative again, that was the Google I respected. I work in search quality at Google. I'm busting my ass every day working on fundamental reimaginings of how results get ranked. I'm going to keep doing that regardless of what bing does, because it makes the world a better place, and it's fun. But, suppose the stuff I'm working on works out, and tomorrow Google shows up with a whol…
You have computed a relationship between FOO and BAR. For as long as you keep it to yourself, this ephemeral relationship is a secret, yours to keep. Once you tell the world that FOO and BAR are related, and the whole world looks at it and says "Yay, it IS related!", the relationship stops being ephemeral and becomes actual, reflected in actions of the users. You no loner own that relationship. You can't claim owners…
It's not as straightforward as all that. Suppose you write a book. The existence of that book is a fact. The words that are in that book are now a fact. Now, I create a book that says, "The following book was written by DennisM, this is a list of the words that are in that book, in order" and then precede to duplicate your book. Those are the words that are in the book, it's a fact, no one can deny that it's a fact. That's not defensible, even though I'm just stating a fact.
We're in a somewhat grey area here, dealing with ethical issues that have never been clearly dealt with before. However, I feel that a general principle of the web applies: If I create some data, and don't at least implicitly give you permission to use it, it's unethical for you to use it.
This is the central idea behind copyright, behind robots.txt, behind plagiarism, and even behind privacy.