The hegemony of control over our search platforms by a few large corporations raises justifiable concerns, particularly in light of emerging geopolitical tensions and growing instances of ideological imposition by authoritarian actors to manipulate public opinion. Recent movement for promote open search has emerged in response. This follows from past and ongoing push for openness to challenge corporate oligopolies (e.g., open source and open AI models) which have seen significant ongoing negotiations and renegotiations to establish standards around what constitutes being open. These tensions have hindered these movements from effectively challenging power, in turn allowing powerful corporations to neutralize or co-opt these movements to further entrench their dominance. We argue that the push for open search will inevitably encounter similar conflicts, and should foreground these tensions to safefguard against similar challenges as these adjacent movements. In particular, we argue that the concept of open should be understood not with respect to what is being made open but through a capability-theoretic lens, in terms of the capabilities it affords to the actors the system is being opened to.

翻译：少数大型企业对搜索平台控制权的垄断引发了合理的担忧，尤其是在地缘政治紧张局势日益加剧、威权行为体为操纵舆论而进行意识形态强加的事例不断增多的背景下。近期兴起的推动开放搜索的运动正是对此的回应。这延续了过去及当前为挑战企业寡头垄断（例如开源和开放AI模型）而推动开放性的努力，这些领域已进行了大量持续不断的谈判与重新谈判，以确立关于何为开放的标准。这些张力阻碍了这些运动有效挑战权力，反而使强大的企业得以消解或吸纳这些运动，从而进一步巩固其主导地位。我们认为，推动开放搜索将不可避免地遭遇类似的冲突，并应将这些张力置于前台，以防范面临与这些相邻运动相似的挑战。具体而言，我们认为，对开放概念的理解不应着眼于被开放的对象，而应通过能力理论的视角，依据其为系统所面向的行动者所提供的赋能来审视。