When the only way to protect knowledge is to make it secret then you literally get knowledge that die like Damascus steel did. It was so advantageous to protect

When the only way to protect knowledge is to make it secret then you literally get knowledge that die like Damascus steel did. It was so advantageous to protect how it was made that now a thousand years after it was first created we have no clue how it was made(or how we have lost nuclear missle secrets because the secret was to well kept.) Just think of how secretive Google is. If it weren't for the patent system how much would us lowly outsiders know about pagerank?