The Cloud needs to be open – just as source code and data protocols needed to be open to create the Internet. With more and more data moving into and being created inside the cloud, this data needs to be owned by the creators, not the services. For the sake of discussion, let’s call this: “Open Data.”

Gmail used to have a limit of 10,000 contacts. For most of us, this was way more than enough, but we heard from some of you who use Gmail to communicate with more than 10,000 people. We want you to be able to store all of your contacts in a single place, so starting today, we’ve increased the limit for all Gmail users, including all those of you who use Google Apps, to 25,000 contacts.

In a nod to human error, Google is now letting Gmail users reverse any changes they’ve made to their contacts over a 30-day period.

That means if you’ve gone on a regrettable contact-deleting binge within the past 30 days, you can go into your Gmail account and restore the desired version of your contacts list.

It’s a relatively small change, but one that — like the ability to “unsend” an e-mail — gives wide berth to user error and even intentional missteps.