An interesting thing to think about even though the basic reaction is "wait, no, that's their industry secret/revenue basis/whatever". Google is so dominant rig

An interesting thing to think about even though the basic reaction is "wait, no, that's their industry secret/revenue basis/whatever". Google is so dominant right now that maybe it's going to get to the point where, in the interests of the open web, they get pressured and lobbied to release their secret sauce; after all, as swombat points out, it's not just the algorithm by a long chalk. It's especially interesting if you consider the origins of PageRank in academia, freely published and peer-reviewed, and still not that well understood by laypeople; would the open-sourced magic of Google even be understandable by that many folk? Those that do understand it could make a fortune as consultants; at the moment, shady SEO snake-oil salesmen are so prevalent and 99% of their advice is outdated or plain wrong, something that definitively calls them out on it could be helpful.