1) Free as in open source: they have had a couple high profile open source projects including Chrome (Chromium), Wave, I think Google Code is free for any open

1) Free as in open source: they have had a couple high profile open source projects including Chrome (Chromium), Wave, I think Google Code is free for any open source project, they are the majority funding source of Mozilla and therefore Firefox. Practically every month there is some announcement like this about how they are supporting free software: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2060629/Google-Funds-Open-Source-Development-Initiative-at-Two-Oregon-Universities http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2060629/Google-Funds-Op... 2) Free as in liberated data; they make a big deal that it is trivial to import or export your data out of any of their services. If you are looking at your contacts in GMail it's as simple as More Actions > Export Contacts. Compare that with exporting contacts from Facebook. They have a whole "data liberation" API that they have been pushing for that is far more open than any other major player in the tech industry.