I fall largely into the bucket of "if you can give away your idea in one sentence, then you're toast" but I personally break down my projects into three parts:

1. The idea itself in the way you'd present it to the layman

2. The engineering problems you face in implementing the idea

3. The solution to said problems

You can come off as being "open" by disclosing only the first part. If another person overhears (1) in your discussion, in order to implement the idea they first need to figure out (2) what makes it hard before even (3) devoting resources to solving the problem. And how you approach (2) and (3) in addition to just (1) is what determines success (read: execution). Note that I am making an assumption that whatever you're working on requires actual engineering.

So for the example of Google,

1) A search engine that lets you find stuff

2) Relevance is really freakin' hard

3) PageRank

None of this of course applies to negotiations with VCs, where the rules turn on their head and you don't want to make yourselves look like you are effortlessly delivering solutions. And unless you're looking for a certain type of leverage, acknowledging the fact that negotiations exist to other people is probably a bad idea too.

Great comment, as is the parent. But I'd question your Google history. PageRank was talked about from the beginning. The list went more like this:

1. Hey everybody, check out this new search engine with a genius algorithm called "PageRank" that returns much more relevant results!

2. ?

3. ?

In other words, Google is a prime example of what zaidf is saying. PageRank was a huge marketing hit. Over 10 years later, it's still the first thing anyone mentions when they talk about Google's competitive edge, yet this has been a fiction for ages and may largely have been so from the beginning. How much of a technical edge was it really, compared to the other things Google did right? That remains totally obscure (see 2 and 3 above).

With PageRank, I think google gets a lot of leverage from misinformation, which can be as important as the information.

Few people really know much about PageRank beyond the general idea. In Google's case, I think they talked about PageRank more because they had written a paper on it and it was already public whether they talked or not.

But if you observe, beyond the original paper, little is known about PageRank from Google. There are plenty of guesses--right and wrong--that can be pieced together to form a narrative of the changes and evolution in PageRank. But nothing official from Google. And probably for a reason.

Yes, and not only PageRank: they've done the same thing with BigTable, GFS, etc. They're masters of selective disclosure. Two things one often hears about Google is how open they are and how secretive they are, and what's remarkable is that both are true.

I don't how much attribution the marketing of PageRank vs the actual effectiveness of PageRank (and undoubtedly other things never made public) deserves in the overall success of Google. I can't really think of a way in which we could easily come to such a conclusion either.

Ask Jeeves (or maybe Yahoo) tried a big "The Algorithm" marketing campaign and that clearly got them nowhere. I think if we're talking about marketing the "I'm feeling lucky" button was more of a boon to virality than PageRank.

Choosing PageRank was probably a slight lapse in integrity in my post, but undoubtedly there's been a whole bunch of other examples in Google's history which do fit the mold (GFS, MapReduce, Pregel, etc).

So,

  1. PageRank
  2. ???
  3. Profit

I solved one of them...

(Worth the potential downvotes.)

Today's so called "hackers" don't have the stomach or training for anything involving eigenvectors.

What nonsense. And would you like them to get off your lawn as well?

Well put.

I gauge how much to share from person to person, or even town to town. I know being in a college town, I can get away with sharing a lot more, even down to the details because it is rare I am talking to someone who has the motivation or skill to even try to execute.

The same would not be true in Frisco where I know there are serious executors and I'd be a little more wary of the depth I go into.

I have this perspective because I am someone who regularly gets great ideas from listening to other folks talk. I am surprised by the depth they go into and as a consumer, welcome it! But if I were in their shoes, I am not sure I'd share the same information.

Having said all this, very few people anywhere will say that I am a secretive guy. I just try to be deliberate about what I share. I also believe in reciprocation, especially with numbers. And I am happy to lead.

Some thing I made sure to not mention publicly: The exact domain name I planned to buy for several months before getting around to it. Anyone could have bought it and squatted on it if I had mentioned it publicly. Only a few people close to me knew what it was while I developed a new site without having a domain name. I did spend some time wondering if that was really the right name while I worked on developing the site idea and eventually decided it was.

As I have stated here previously, one of my plans is to learn a programming language and write a simulation for my health site. I don't think it can be stolen because it will be rooted in the things I do for my own health -- ie it is rooted in first-hand personal life experience. Even if someone stole the general idea to create a "game" to help people with wellness, I don't think they could really steal my idea to create a game to help people with my diagnosis get healthier. I know plenty of people doing alternative stuff and seeing better than average results. I don't know anyone who has had the kind of results I and my son have had. So I don't think anyone else knows what I know, therefore any other simulation would not contain the mental models I have in my head. Thus, I don't worry about that.

On the other hand, I mostly talk about that plan here and have also mentioned it in passing on a health list for a different type of medical condition. I don't think I have mentioned it on any of the CF lists I belong to. I think it would get point-and-laugh type reactions: "Yeah, sure, you are going to cure my deadly medical condition by having me play a video game. Har-dee-har-har." I also have no idea how long it will take me to implement. I have yet to even learn any code. So that is another reason I am keeping that plan to myself in the communities where a few people might be interested in it. I don't want people to be tired of hearing "empty promises" by the time I actually implement it.