Larry Dignan and Dan Farber at CNET have the early scoop on Yahoo’s freshly unveiled Yahoo! Open Strategy somewhat cryptically labelled …. “Y!OS”

Ari Balogh, Yahoo CTO said at the San Francisco Web 2.0 Conference today:

“We are taking open to a whole other place,”… “We are rewiring
Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets
of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social
throughout and provide hooks to developers.”

It is too early to know if this type of openness will be embraced by developers to the degree needed to make a significant impact in the way people use Yahoo services, but it is very encouraging to see how the key players are racing to claim the title of the “most open” online environments. Facebook’s API’s were followed by Google Open Social and now Yahoo which appears to offer more programmatic freedom than ever across Yahoo’s massive number of network assets and 500,000,000 person user base.