Would be great for all participants if the auction’s dynamics were public.
I think you're forgetting about the main participant, Google.
I think the platforms in particular benefit from trust. Maybe not this quarter, but surely over the course of years/decades.
I believe he is mocking the average HN commenter, who simultaneously complains about these types of opaque-black-box systems but attacks transparent distributed systems.
That's how I interpreted it. Everyone seems to want the advantages of the FOSS model for general benefit, but want firms to have their advantages at the same time, and not acknowledge the inherent adversarial aspect of that.