Q: Are Google's search secrets about to be revealed?

Another question just came in. A US media exec IMd to ask: “Is it true that the secrets of how Google search works are going to be made public by the judge?”

The answer is yes - if the judge decides to give the Department of Justice what it has asked for in the remedies due in August.

If he accepts the DoJ’s argument, then the data, the algos, the entire shooting match of what makes Google search what it is, will be available to everyone.

And that’s crazy, because Google’s secret sauce is probably the most closely guarded secret in all the web as it drives the lion’s share of its $350 billion annual revenue.

So why would the DoJ want this?

It goes to the heart of the reason the DoJ has brought the case. It wants to create competition and innovation, and argues that Google’s monopoly holds this back.

Google has gone to great pains since losing this case to argue that it’s the best search engine in the world.

But in truth we can’t know whether that’s right or wrong because Google’s dominance has meant no other search engine has had a chance to get off the ground.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, testified in court that he spent $100 billion in Bing and took only three points of market share.

It prompted him to make one of the most memorable comments of the trial, when he said search was “the biggest no fly zone in Silicon Valley” because VCs would never invest there.

If you want to dive deeper into the remedies, and the specific Google secrets the DoJ wants revealed, you can find that here.

But in short, the answer to the question is yes, the DoJ has asked for all Google’s secret search sauce to be made public.

And a judge will decide whether to do it in just 71 days’ time. Tick tick, tick…