Thank you for your comment, for a (long) while I thought that I was the only one remembering those times and especially the ideals people were bringing up then. Sometime in 2005 I even copy-pasted this quote on my blog, high in believing that the future will belong to open data and open information:

> Bosworth advocated an open model for data.(...) Imagine if you can query any data that is available anywhere in the world. Bosworth said that what this requires is a single, simple, open wire format for items. The format needs to be simple for any P programmer to deliver and any JavaScript programmer to consume. He also pointed out that "complex things tend to break and simple things tend to work." Google has the simplest query language in the world. There is no structure and no syntax. (my note: at that time Bosworth was VP of Product Management at Google)

That is all dead now.