Sharing Ain’t Always Good

Lots of people advocate openness, transparency and sharing in the context of ideas. Some take it too far, though, when they advocate that even algorithms should be available for everyone to see. Like when European regulators start pushing Google to open up its algorithm that ranks websites.

The stakes are very high. For most of us, search is synonymous with Google. And few look beyond the first couple of results that Google throws up. Any lower and nobody even knows the site exists! If you own a bookstore or hotel and show up low down the list, it is disastrous for business. No wonder it is businesses that are pushing to open up Google’s algorithm. (Some of them complain they are ranked lower even though they are the most relevant result).

It’s obvious why Google itself would be against the idea. After all, once the algorithm is public property, out goes Google’s monopoly. And its multi-billion dollar empire.

Well, you might say, that’s just too bad for Google. But is there any other reason why the rest of us should oppose opening up of their algorithm?

We need to look at (where else?) Wall Street to understand why opening up algorithms is not a good thing. The credit rating agencies (the ones that rank bonds as AAA or BB+ or whatever) made their rating algorithms public in the interests of transparency. They felt it would help companies and governments know why they were rated higher or lower. Guess what Wall Street did with that information? They tweaked their products such that the rating algorithm gave their products higher ratings!

If websites know Google’s ranking algorithm, they will tweak their pages to cause them to show up higher on the results. Even when it’s not the most relevant result…

Do we really want that to happen? For Google to be manipulated to show irrelevant results? It would mean returning to the pre-Google era, the Stone Age of the Internet. Why would anyone want that to happen?






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