kaled - 12:44 am on Oct 14, 2003 (gmt 0)

To be specific, knowing all the backlinks that Google had found, along with toolbar PR data, the competition could essentially reverse engineer the current PageRank algo in use.

Given that toolbar PR data is unreliable (and imprecise), this is certainly nonsense. However, even if it were true, what advantage would other search engines gain by such knowledge?

The link: command fails to work in Google for technical reasons. If they could make it work better they would.

Who outside of weirdo webmasters of the sort that hang out here ever use the link: command? Why should Google care about this at all?

Whether they care or not is irrelevant. The fact is that it helps webmasters determine how effiently Google is updating it index. The inescapable conclusion is that others are doing better. Of course that does not mean that others produce better search results but it does mean that there is room for improvement at Google.

Kaled.