Easy Does It: Google Friend Connect One-Ups Facebook Connect's Install Wizard
The battle over your online identity rages on. Google Friend Connect, the search giant's platform that lets you accept Google and OpenID accounts on your site, has just made implementing the service about as easy as it could be.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has been assembling Friend Connect piece by piece since its May 2008 preview of making any website social, then wiring in third-party identity through the December 2008 Twitter integration and a social bar for publishers in February 2009. The through-line is OpenID: Google first tested federated logins on its own properties with OpenID logins via Blogger back in January 2008, and Friend Connect extends that model to the open web.
First-order effects
- Website owners can now adopt Friend Connect with a near-zero-friction wizard instead of hand-editing code, directly lowering the barrier that Facebook Connect's implementation process still imposes on smaller publishers.
Second-order effects
- Facebook faces pressure to match Google's setup simplicity or cede the long tail of small sites, while rival identity plays like Yahoo's March 2009 bid to challenge Facebook Connect now compete against a Google product that is easier to install than all of them.
Third-order effects
- If install friction decides adoption among millions of small sites, the login wars shift from feature checklists to publisher ergonomics — favoring whichever platform turns third-party websites into distribution for its own identity graph.
The trend: Third-party site logins are becoming a land-grab where Google, Facebook, and Yahoo compete on how little work a publisher must do to embed their identity system.