New York — Internet savvy people need not retain scores of user ids to access different web services — On Wednesday Google formally offered relief with its support as a provider for the OpenID 2.0 protocol, giving some site owners a means to allow users log-in and register for new accounts using existing Google account information. Most notably, Google will be permitting these same users to manage all their linked account information in one central location.
This seems to be quite a good week for OpenID, barely days after Microsoft announced the adoption of the OpenID standard for Windows Live users, an increasingly popular concept for creating and managing a single identity across the Internet, and today, Google rushed to the rescue of its users by joining the initiative, although not as openly as Yahoo or Microsoft.
This new log-in offering is not provided to every site owners just yet. Google will permit web site owners to join a limited test of an API based on the OpenID 2.0 protocol that will give Google Account users the option to sign in to websites with their Google credentials and without having to sign up for a new account at those sites.
Among the launch partners for this new API are Zoho, Plaxo and Buxfer sites that already have the new system in place.
The OpenID advocates a technology that enables users to create one identity that will work for an unlimited number of Web sites, which means we can forget about all those IDs and passwords we often lost track of.
As it is obvious that just like Microsoft and Yahoo, this OpenID support also dose not allow you to use services of say Picasa with a Windows or Yahoo ID. The importance is that Google limited access to an API for an OpenID identity provider, which means users’ will be able to login to websites by using their Gmail account. However, users from other accounts will not be able to log in to Google sites with OpenID, at least not now.
Google’s penetration into this is strictly as a provider, adding extra value for those who register for a Google account, while keeping users with OpenIDs from other providers out.
OpenID enthusiasts should not fuss though. Just because Google is not opening up its own sites to OpenID log-ins from others does not mean it is not around the corner.
Google’s Eric Sachs also announced that it is working to combine the OAuth and OpenID protocol so that a service can not only request a user’s identity through OpenID, but also “request access to information available via OAuth-enabled APIs such as Google Data APIs as well as standard data formats such as Portable Contacts and OpenSocial REST APIs.”
But thanks to this announcement, which opened a wide range of some of the web’s largest service providers now supports OpenID: Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, and AOL.
As John McCrea notes, the result of these announcements from Google and Microsoft this week should be “a massive adoption wave for OpenID all over the web.”
For now, it appears that Google is not totally willing to plunge into the OpenID protocol, and it will probably wait for a larger adoption to really open up