Talk:The Open Internet

When talking about the open Internet, I like that you talk about open-source versus closed-source, since that is in fact a key factor in being able to use the Internet. You can see all of the source code that is used to display the page. However, you can only get to the code that is used to actually render the layout of the page. This is different from the code that is used to put the information together to prepare the page. For example. I consider Google to be a contributor to the open Internet. They provide free services such as email, code repository storage, calendar creation and management, document creation and management, as well as search. However, we have no idea how some of the algorithms and implementation details of these services work. We don't know how labels work under the hood in GMail, and we don't know the details about how Google search works either. And, I suspect that it will remain that way to preserve their business and to continue to make money. Case in point, it is importan to understand that you can have both closed-source and an open Internet. This is through the employment of an interface. We don't have to know how Google search works to use it. They just give us a text box and a button, which in combination allow us to perform an easy Internet search.

I'm also glad that you talked about some of the awesome projects that came of the open Internet to really emphasize its usefulness. It also makes us understand where some of these things came from that we took for granted.

I would also like to mention that w3schools.com is not the most reliable source of information (see website: w3fools.com). I would recommend reference.sitepoint.com as a more authoritative source on web markup programming.

-Ben Asher