The OpenID Train Steams Ahead: Google, IBM and Verisign Said To Be Joining
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.
Context & Ripple Effects
OpenID has been accumulating mainstream backing piecemeal — Digg, Technorati, Microsoft, AOL, Plaxo and Wikipedia had all previously announced intentions to join — but Mike Butcher's report of late-stage talks with Google, IBM and VeriSign (unconfirmed, per a highly-placed source) would mark a step change in the weight behind the federated-login standard.
The timing matters: it lands the day after Google and Facebook joined the DataPortability Workgroup, alongside Plaxo, making January 2008 the moment when identity portability moved from an open-source side project to something the largest platforms were publicly negotiating their way into.
First-order effects
- If the talks conclude, the OpenID Foundation gains three heavyweight corporate members whose brands lend the decentralized login standard the credibility that earlier adopters like Digg and Plaxo could not.
- Facebook's closed credential system faces its first coordinated external pushback: Google joining both OpenID talks and the DataPortability Workgroup puts the walled-garden login at odds with where its chief rival is positioning.
Second-order effects
- Other large sites face pressure to declare a position on federated identity — staying on proprietary accounts starts to read as a competitive statement rather than a default.
- Vendors in the authentication business see the pricing floor move toward free, standards-based single sign-on, squeezing proprietary identity products just as IBM's involvement signals enterprise demand.
Third-order effects
- Identity is being repositioned as shared infrastructure: if the pattern holds, user login becomes a commodity layer that portals compete above rather than a lock-in asset they defend, with standards bodies rather than any single company setting the terms.
The trend: Web identity is consolidating around open, federated standards as the biggest platform companies negotiate entry into the same governance bodies.