DBS Interactive Blog

In a recent blog, Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management at Google had this to say:

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. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important. The Meaning of Open

This commitment to openness is one thing that sets Google apart from the other major players in the tech industry.  And perhaps helps explain how they have come to be such a dominant player.

Its also one reason we at DBS watch Google’s every move. They are pushing the technologies that drive the online world more than anyone else.

The other giants in the industry are Apple and Microsoft. Apple has a long history of innovation and producing game changing products. The iPhone, iPad and iPod are all really cool products that changed the industry in a very positive direction. They pushed their respective envelopes.

But Apple is just as well known for their “walled garden” philosophy, where they control the user’s access to content and technologies that the power brokers within Apple don’t like. They are benevolent dictators. Apple users typically have but one way to play the game — it’s Apple’s way or the highway. Most Apple users probably don’t care since their view of the world from within those high walls, is pretty nice.

And then we have the other giant, Microsoft. Nobody would ever confuse Microsoft as an innovator or of doing much that could be called “game changing”.  Or “open” for that matter. In fact, if there is anti-thesis to Google’s openness, its Microsoft’s closed, proprietary protocols, their partial acceptance of standards, and their apparent reluctance to support the openness of the Internet beyond that which supports their self-interests in the Desktop and Server markets. “Free” and “open” are four letter words in the Microsoft dictionary. Try imagining anything like the following coming from Microsoft:

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). The Meaning of Open

Of course, this isn’t pure altruism on Google’s part. A bigger, more pervasive Internet is just good business for them.  Google’s technical know-how and seemingly limitless resources allows them to take on challenges that most companies would deem too great.  Google has stayed true to their goal and has without a doubt become essential to the growth of the Internet and the acceptance of open-standards.  Just take a look, at literally, a small fraction of the many products Google has developed and then made open for the world to build upon, customize, and improve:

• Android – Operating system for phones and handheld devices
• Google Analytics – Traffic statistics generator for websites
• Chrome – Open source web browser for Mac, Windows, and Linux
• Gmail – Free email system that offers many times the amount of storage space than other services
• Wave – Communications platform and collaboration tool

Each of these products has somehow helped transform the industry that they service.  Google is often attacked for being too big, too powerful, and yet without Google’s size and their backing of open source, the many tools and products we use daily to improve and simplify our lives would not exist.

I’d like to leave you with one final quote from The Meaning of Open that may be especially telling of the future, as seen by Google.

Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: 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.

We’ll just have to wait to see what the future holds, but I for one, wouldn’t bet against them!