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CommentsIn separate announcements this week, both Google and Microsoft stated their intentions to join the ranks of OpenID providers. OpenID is a protocol which gives users a way to sign in to multiple websites and web services using a single login. At first glance this is great news for everyone, since OpenID has the potential to change the tedious "different login for every site" practice. However, the specific implementations of the two tech giants may harm the wider community of OpenID providers and supporting sites.
Microsoft, Google and OpenID: the Good Yahoo and AOL were the first prominent names to throw their weight behind the open OpenID [sic] standard. This contributed significantly to the visibility of OpenID, and the announced support for OpenID by Microsoft and Google will make even more people take interest in this promising technology. Another point to consider is that OpenID's privacy and security aspects are entirely dependent on the service provider. In other words, you can register with any of the hundreds and thousands of OpenID providers, and then use that account to access any OpenID-enabled site, but if you choose to go with a big name like Google you can be reasonably sure that your personal information will be in safer hands. Yes, it is an open, free-for-all network of providers, but companies like Microsoft and AOL have a lot to lose if they prove themselves unable to protect their clients' personal details. ...and the Bad Let's get straight to the sour news: Google's implementation will be a "fork" of the original OpenID, and the company will develop its own flavor of the protocol. The forking will break compatibility between Google's specification and OpenID vanilla. "Basically, Google has rewritten OpenID. Not only is it not exactly the same as the current OpenID protocol, it’s so different that existing OpenID relying parties won't be able to use it. Only a handful of 'partner sites' have been updated to understand Google’s perverted version of the OpenID standard, and anyone else hoping to authenticate via 'OpenID' to Google’s servers will need to do the same." Source. And what about Microsoft? They will be providing OpenID accounts for the millions of registrants with Windows Live, but they will not be accepting OpenIDs from other providers. No plans were announced to enable people with existing OpenIDs to access Microsoft's online services without first registering with the company, the traditional way. It remains to be seen how the company will handle the protocol from this point on. More OpenID trouble Despite the vocal support for the protocol from technically minded people and web professionals, the mainstream is still widely uninformed about the benefits and existence of OpenID. This was one of the key findings from a recent study, conducted by none other than key OpenID provider Yahoo. They even found faults with the usability and compatibility of their own implementation. From the blog post, accompanying the release of the survey results: "Observing [the OpenID] tests was more than a bit frustrating for the Yahoo! OpenID team, and the test subjects may have been distracted by the sounds of the groans and head-pounding coming from the other side of the one-way mirror. Certainly there is a lot of work to be done on the OpenID UX (user experience) front...Hopefully, as SimpleReg/AttributeExchange are more widely supported (Yahoo does not currently support them), relying parties will no longer feel the need to force the user through an additional registration form after signing in with an OpenID." A Missing Ingredient Active support for the protocol from major web hosting companies is notably missing. For almost everyone, the web host is the first step to a real online presence. This is an ideal occasion to promote and support OpenID, especially given that the OpenID account has the format of a URL. Definitely food for thought. More: Windows Live ID Becomes an OpenID Provider Google moves towards single sign-on with OpenID Yahoo! Releases OpenID Research
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