Even though the Google top secret conference had its members sign NDAs, that hasn’t stopped at least three of them from blabbing to Mike “Mr. Access” Arrington about it.  Details of course at TechCrunch, but it sounds like Google is secretly rallying its resources to build a social network that is going to “100%” open.

Again, I’m not going to regurgitate the details, save that from the sounds of it, the really geeky minds behind Google are going to out-geek Facebook on the “open” issue.  Whatever their social network is going to be like, its going to be so open, everyone and their mama is going to be able to push and pull data right from Google applications.  Look for November 5th to be the date that a whole bunch of API’s will be published so that folks can get right into it.

Now, I think that a whole lot more is going to come out of the wash — and there are going to be a whole lot more opinions on this the entire weekend.

But, I think there’s one thing that doesn’t quite add up with Google’s efforts.  While yes, its one thing to be able to drag out Google’s social graph information by being 100% open, and yes, Google is Google — their user base is pretty large — the *only* way that *any* of the “we’re going to out-facebook by being more open” strategy is ever going to *matter* is if people actually use Google’s social network.

That is to say, it runs into the thinking (my thinking, maybe your thinking) that social networks are sort of zero-sum game.  Most people don’t have the time or attention to cultivate identities on more than a few social networks.  And that’s *besides* the fact that there’s the locked-in part where social networks only work if your friends are in the same social network.

In this preliminary-half-baked-information-that-still-needs-to-be-verified-bordering-on-sheer-speculation …

… I mean if its half true, Google’s putting the cart *way* in front of the horse.

There’s a reason why Facebook only introduced opening its social network years after it started.  Hey, you’re right, maybe they didn’t think of it.  But I suspect that the powers that be probably *did*, but realized that it won’t work if you don’t have a robust social network in the first place.

Who *cares*, wants to write applications for, develop products that access a social network if there isn’t a critical mass of users to begin with?

Now, yes, I will remind myself that it *is* still Google.

But on the other hand, yes, they are *still* Google, who have had failures in the past too, who is still really only king of one thing: serving ads.