On Being ‘Open’

We hear a lot of talk about ‘open’. what does it mean, and what are the implications for all of us?

According to Jonathon Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Google, being open can mean difference things to different people, so he defined it for Googlers and those who use Google and all it’s applications and tools. The Google blog says:

There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information.

In other words, Google is supposed to be doing its best to make the internet better for everyone, including that they accept user input to continually improve – and that although they collect information, they should always provide a way for you to directly control how that information is used. In addition, Google believes:

Our skills and our culture give us the opportunity and responsibility to prevent this from happening. We believe in the power of technology to deliver information. We believe in the power of information to do good. We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get… The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet.

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