When you conduct a Google search on something, you are using a trade secret— the algorithm that powers Google’s search engine and ranks the results.12 Google works hard to maintain secrecy for its code and employs more than 500 full-time security people in its software engineering division.13 The company routinely refuses legal demands to view the code made by U.S. regulators and foreign governments.14

The search algorithm that underpins Google’s operations is a closely guarded trade secret, with good apolitical reason: too much public knowledge of how it prioritizes search results could lead to unethical gamesmanship that would promote spam and low-quality links.

If one applies the above definition to Google’s algorithm, it translates to the following: the algorithm to be considered and protected as a trade secret must have a commercial value, and it must be known only to a few people, where those people have taken measures to keep it a secret, for example, by signing confidentiality agreements.