Google have spoken about openness. Basically they agree to be open as long as it's not about their search algorithm or their secret back end. Makes sense.
After having read this article at The Register, one thought is slowly forming on the top of my head.

As I have been writing somewhere earlier, Google tends to become the favorite toy in the hands of links/content farms, and I have to insist on the fact that I'm actually using it less and less when it comes to searching.

Google's main argument about not opening their sources is that it would give key information to black hats and spammer to manipulate their algorithm and bias the search rankings.
Another argument is that they simply don't want to give away the product of ten years of hard labor.

What could actually happen if Google DID go full open?
Probably both argument would turn out to be true, but in the end I tend to think that it would enhance user's browsing experience, simply because once an algorithm is supported by a whole open source community, it benefits from the smarts of hundreds more people. Yes black hats would go at it, but fixes would eventually come and anyway in case you didn't notice, spammer are ALREADY at it.

Now, in a context where users tend to rediscover to power of social interaction, and where the word of the fingers is slowly replacing the world of the mouth, search engine might quickly become a 2nd or 3rd grade facility if they don't find a way to adapt this current change of trend.

Would they actually take the dare?
Maybe. I don't think their current attempt at becoming the internet's major hub will benefit any freezing of their policies after the launch of Chrome OS. They will by then be everywhere, and do mostly everything, and they will need to keep up the good work, harder than ever before... what's better than some hundreds/thousands extra heads for that?

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