Google, throughout it"s corporate history, has been secretive by nature. Asides from the glossy websites they publish, Google has not disclosed much about its operations. However, according to The Age they intend to change this. The news came out as part of a Google recruitment drive prior to their going public. Google intends to triple the number of people working for its organisation (to about 2100), and was using the night to assess the viability of opening an office in Melbourne, Australia.
Wayne Rosing, the company"s vice-president of engineering, said "There have been a lot of conversations in the company in the past two months about (how) . . . it"s time for us to give something back. So our technical director, Craig Silverstein, has started a project to look at all the Google code and start figuring out what parts of it we want to give back. I"m not saying we"re going to open-source Google, because that would be a little dumb when we have these Microsoft guys making noise."
Asides from the implication here, true or otherwise, that open source is inferior to closed source, it is interesting to ponder what Google could feasibly open up. The company already has the Google API, allowing developers to use their search tools from programs. One suspects that it will be more in terms of the R & D done at Google. Google employees a very high percentage of PhD students, giving the company an enormous concentration of intelligent people. Any "opening up" will probably come in this area.