No one is mistaking Google for anything else than a giant corporation these days; yet, it somehow managed to keep some of its clout from the early startup days when the “Don’t be Evil” motto first popped up. There is a rising amount of criticism for the company, but Google is maintaining that its ways are good for everyone, the users, the web and obviously itself. In its latest attempt to spell out what Google is all about, Jonathan Rosenberg, senior VP of product management at Google, tries to explain what ‘open’ means at the company.
“At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk,” Rosenberg starts off. The real problem, he says, is that there is no clear, universal definition of open.
So, Google set out to clarify what open means for the company, in an internal email for employees which was now published for everyone to see. It says that there are two main components to openness at Google, open technology and open information.
Open technology refers to the way Google builds its current and upcom… (read more)