This reminds me of Matt Cutts' "Not trapping users' data = GOOD" post of a while back: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/not-trapping-users-data-good/

A couple of additions:
- Picasa Web Albums' Download Album link in the sidebar allows you to download a whole batch of pictures at once.
- Google Talk's open protocols.
- Google Reader: OPML import+export
- Google News: RSS functionality for results

And I'm sure there is more.

I'm not entirely sure you can call most of those "open". I mean what's so open in Google getting your data and hosting it. I think you case of web services you can say that they are somehow open if they:
1. Allow you to get your date back FROM them
or
2. Allow other applications to automatically get their data via open API

In this regard the following items from your list are open:

1. Pop3 in Gmail

2. AJAX API (I haven't checked this, but ain't you required to include some JavaScript files, and therefore give some of the control over website to Google? If so, traditional API was more open, because it was server-side and you could do with the data what you wanted)

3. Blog search results in an RSS feed

4. FTP-export option in blogger

5. Export options in Google Calendar, Google Docs and SketchUp. It's standard for all similar applications on the market, though.

Google Gears is not a web service, but a truly open source application, that's something entirely else.

All the other examples from the article are just about Google's sucking in user's content.

>I'm not entirely sure you can call most of those "open". I mean what's >so open in Google getting your data and hosting it. I think you case of >web services you can say that they are somehow open if they:
>1. Allow you to get your date back FROM them
>or
>2. Allow other applications to automatically get their data via open API

Good point. I think that if we are giving Google credit for this sort of "openness", then we also need to swallow our collective dislike of MS, and recognize that MS is just as "open" as Google in these areas.

What I mean is that if you enter your data into MS Word, the Word software lets you save your data not only as a Word document, but also "export" it as fully-open ASCII text. Similarly, if you enter your data into MS Excel, the Excel software lets you "export" your data as CSV.

So if we are going to give Google "credit" for openness, we need to be logically consistent and give Microsoft just as much credit. Or, if we think that Microsoft should not deserve any openness credit for allowing you to save your Word document as ASCII, then we should also not give Google any credit, either.

Ludwik – I don't want to put words in Phillip's mouth, but I think he means open in the sense that Google allow users to use these services in its network; or to put differently, third parties can build on top of Google's services and reach Google customers.

Anyway, Phillip, I think you can add access to your search history via a RSS feed.(this is an important one I think) http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54464