Google: Our systems will always be open...except when they're not

Google has just published a manifesto explaining why open systems and open software lead to innovation, more consumer choice, and a more vibrant and profitable economy. It vowed that its systems will always be open --- but still refuses to be open about its most important code, its search algorithms.

On the Google blog, Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's Senior Vice President for Product Management published a memo he had previously sent to Google employees about "the meaning of 'open' as it relates to the Internet, Google, and our users." It is an extremely compelling, well-thought-out argument in favor of open systems. Here is its opening:

At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important.

Rosenberg then explains in great detail why open systems are superior to closed systems, and he defines open standards, open source, and similar terms. In explaining why open systems win over closed systems, he takes a not-to-subtle swipe at Apple, arguing that Apple only wants to maintain the status quo:

To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, while the old IBM made the mainframes expensive and the software ... expensive too. Either way, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don't have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won't.

It's all well and good to criticize Apple for developing non-open systems. But Google is as guilty as any company when it comes to not being open. It won't share details about its search algorithms, for example, which is the single most important body of code at the company. Given that, it can't argue that it's open. And it certainly can't criticize Apple for not being open.

Google is no different from Apple or Microsoft when it comes to openness. The company is open when openness suits it; and not open when openness doesn't suit it --- just like just about every other high-tech company on the planet.