> Not only do you have 0 idea about the algorithm they use What? Google was the first search engine that actually published papers on how their search engine w

> Not only do you have 0 idea about the algorithm they use What? Google was the first search engine that actually published papers on how their search engine works, and they've continued to do so through the years. Nearly everything that Google does can be linked to academic and industry publications written by Google employees that describe exactly how their systems work. The only things they keep private are the techniques they use to prevent people from gaming their ranking algorithms. > You don't even know what data they have on you, and how this is used! Again, what? https://takeout.google.com https://takeout.google.com has exactly that information, and again, they were the first company that ever did this, and the vast majority still don't. Google has been incredibly transparent, and they're key reason why the open source community is where it is today. Did people forget what the world was like before Google? Do you remember Embrace Extend Extinguish? Open Source Software was under a full on assault by the software industry. The idea that a software engineer could work on open source software on their free time, let alone get paid for it, was a completely foreign notion.