OpenID Ends 2009 With 1 Billion Users
At the close of a whiz-bang year, OpenID has a lot to be proud of. — With a community of 9 million sites that use OpenID logins and 1 billion individual users, OpenID has effectively revolutionized the way we are able to create and maintain portable identities.
Context & Ripple Effects
When OpenID was introduced in early 2007 as a way to cut down the number of usernames and passwords people juggle, coverage framed it as a promising standard with a usability problem — flow|state's critique of its bewildering consumer signup experience set the tone for a community that spent 2008 on fixes like Clickpass's one-click login. Momentum built through the year as Google, IBM and VeriSign were reported to be adopting the protocol, turning a hobbyist standard into one backed by the largest names on the web.
Ending 2009 at 1 billion individual users across 9 million accepting sites is the payoff of that arc: the decentralized identity idea has moved from developer curiosity to something measured against the entire internet population — which stood around 1 billion users back in 2005. The remaining gap is the one analysts flagged all along: adoption is broad but shallow, with most consumers still not understanding what an OpenID is.
First-order effects
- The 9 million sites accepting OpenID logins can now drop custom registration flows, shifting their user-acquisition cost onto whichever identity provider the visitor already trusts.
- Large providers like Google that back the protocol gain a persistent touchpoint: every third-party sign-in routes through their infrastructure, making them de facto gatekeepers of web identity.
Second-order effects
- Proprietary rival login systems face pressure to match OpenID's reach-or-interoperate calculus, since sites increasingly choose one universal button over maintaining per-provider integrations.
- Usability layers such as Clickpass and anti-spam uses like the Ma.gnolia approach become the value-added surface — whoever simplifies the end-user experience captures the layer between the protocol and its billion users.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, identity consolidates into a small set of large providers sitting atop an open protocol — raising the question of whether OpenID's decentralization survives the concentration of who actually issues the identities.
- A billion-user installed base makes portable identity a candidate default for any new service category (social, commerce, mobile) that needs accounts, effectively commoditizing registration as an infrastructure layer.
The trend: Web authentication is shifting from per-site username/password silos toward federated login backed by a few major providers riding open protocols like OpenID.