TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher is reporting that Google, IBM and Verisign are in late stage discussions with the OpenID Foundation. This news comes on the same day that Google, Facebook and Plaxo joined the DataPortability Workgroup.
Google has been testing OpenID with its Blogger platform since late last year, but this is said to be a more general implementation across core Google properties.
OpenID was originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick, previously at LiveJournal and now at Google. It’s likely he’s pushing this internally. If he gets Google on board, then OpenID has very rosy prospects ahead.
Is the Web 3.0 in the making???
2008. The year of the “Open Social Web”.
Its great to see the “Big Boys” of the tech industry getting involved in these groups; it would be quite a challenge for them to succeed in their missions without this type of backing.
Allen Vartazarian
Famesource.com - Claim your fame!
http://www.famesource.com
Web 3.0 is certainly here, particularly when the big boys start working together — and they are, at least so it seems!
Another example of the overwhelming change going on. Does anyone remember Microsofts Passport? Their one-click gateway for everything. The Web is no longer just winning. It has won. The future is bright for freedom of thought and free enterprise.
Interesting. On one hand, a universal login makes things easy for the user, on the other, the potential for behavior tracking and more targeted advertising is a mighty big temptation. Can Google do one without compromising the other? I can almost see the little devil and angel on Eric’s shoulder.
No Pete, OpenID is much different from M$ passport thing: it’s OPEN!
Maybe I’m just not up with the times but I actually don’t mind having individual sign ons at each site.
This good news that the industry is trying to work together. So the technology escalator has moved on 12 months and openid is now a base level. BUT it still has to be implemented. Kevin Rose promised it 12 months ago for digg and nothing yet! Microsoft has joined many industry forums in the past and never done anything after.
And yet I think the battle ground is not over identity (openid), authorisation (oauth will be the standard for 2008 to get adopted by Google, Amazon, Flickr) but the battle is for your attention.
The commercial game is for advertising dollars based on your attention. e.g FB Beacon
So the real question is even if you can move your identity and social graph, who will you trust to store your identity (FB, plaxo, google) and will your friends be there?
And will you give that trusted provider your attention for free so they can sell it to advertisers for their own value (FB Beacon, Google Trends) or will you eventually realise that your attention is the key value part of your privacy and it has immense value to these providers.
So openid etc are great building blocks but the game is for these providers to convince you to store your attention with them and then for them to make money from it via advertisers.
The REAL win for the dataportability group will be to get the APML standard adopted by all these vendors. Then we can trade (import/export) our attention in exchange for some value. i.e Google if I give you my attention (what I read, bought, viewed) what will you give me in return (Google points - they are coming).
Verisign has been on the OpenID train for a while now.
For example, look at the comment from the Tech Directory for the PIP (Personal Identity Provider) project at Verisign here:
http://blog.simpy.com/blojsom/.....e=comments
flickr is adding it too.
2008 is the year of collaboration and all the leaders working together for the common good and moving things forward.
It is like the 60’s or something man. Groovy.
@11: Flickr is Yahoo. And unlike Google, IBM, and Verisign, they’re not just talking. They’re doing. But of course, Google talking about it beats any other company actually doing it..
All identities provided by openID and other rely on URLs or domain names like myname.openid.org or openid.org/myname. By this customers are dependend on the the provider of such an URL.
It would be much better if any person can have a real and unique identity with a domain like http://www.forename.surname. Top-Level-Domains like a .smith, .brown or whatever are secured by ICANN not to fail by bankruptcy.
I hope this will mean the experience of using an OpenID login is going to get better. I’m a big fan of OpenID, but using it on some sites gets very complicated. I’ve not yet been able to work out how to use it on Blogger comments (at least, the MyOpenID account I’m using doesn’t seem to be recognised. I’m using Seatbelt as well, which makes this slightly better, but it’s still rather a mess. I have a Plaxo account that I tried to migrate to using my OpenID, but that just created two separate accounts on Plaxo. Hmm.
I find the invocation of the ever elusive “Web 3.0″ amusing. This is Web 2.0 raw and straight up! This is the direction it’s been heading all along, and after a year or two of seemingly stagnant movements towards true openness, things are finally beginning to move fully past Web 2.0 as theory! “Web 3.0″ won’t even be a useful term to think about until well after this plays out and has had it’s impact on the daily lives of nontechnical users for awhile.
In the meantime, when is TechCrunch going to implement OpenID?
I second that - when will TechCrunch implement OpenID? I have over 50 individual logins for sites where logins simply give me posting rights. If I had one for all that would sure make me more inclined to participate (similarly for start ups “Register today!” - ugh, yet ANOTHER username/password). It would be OK if you had a free choice of username and password formats, but you don’t. Woffa don’t want to have no “one uppercase letter and one number” waffa?
Intense Debate anyone? Michael?
One thing that needs to be brought up is that Digg said they’d implement OpenID almost a year ago and have released nothing yet.
Sure people can stick with Web2.0 moniker for ever..
And, Web 3.0, Web 4.0, etc, don’t need to officially exist,
inasmuch as there was no official existence of Web 1.0…
until people need to play with marketing ideas… eg.,
http://www.project10x.com/about.html
Right, it is convenient to have one login instead 50. But as someone mentioned - everyone involved in tracking and targeted advertising definitely will rub his hands. And what about security? If someone steal my id I would be lost.
Having such ID is the same like having one plastic ID card - including your pass, driving license, all credit cards, home/car keys, finger prints, etc. How many from you agree to switch to such card? Can you imagine what will happen if you lose this card? Actually your personality for all people except family/friends will be lost. It is scaring.
I am not against new technologies, just for their proper and meaningful usage.
@Otis: right on. Verisign has been improving the experience for OpenID users all around the globe. Their Seatbelt extension is invaluable. As a user, I absolutely _need_ it.
Great to see increasing adoption of OpenID. As a user, a developer and internet enthusiast, all of this is very very exciting.
Expecting the same from MySpace, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, TechCrunch…
Clearly I’m reading this very late, but no-one else said, so
@14/Dirk: You can already use any URL you control as your OpenID - it’s very deliberately designed that way.
You just set the openid.server and openid.delegate headers in the page at that URL to point at your OpenID provider. You can change OpenID provider any time without changing your OpenID URL.
So it’s as easy to have a permanent OpenID as it is to have a permanent e-mail address - just keep a domain registered, connect it with your current provider, switch providers any time (or run your own if you *really* want.)