The Future of Identity Belongs to Apple and Google
Why is it, when you install an app from the AppStore that requires an account, and you don't already have an account on the service, you have to fill out a form and create one? — It seems like a dumb question, until you consider that this is not your computer.
Context & Ripple Effects
Writing from the App Store era where every new service demands its own signup form, Evan Williams makes the endpoint argument: when you install an iOS app, you are filling out forms on a machine that isn't yours, so the device itself should carry your identity. The essay extends Computerworld's January 2011 case for how Apple and Google could kill the password into a claim about ownership — not just better authentication, but which two companies control the identity layer.
The timing matters: both companies control the two mobile endpoints where app distribution runs through a single storefront, meaning either could make platform-level sign-in a default rather than an opt-in. The piece is a provocation aimed at developers who treat account creation as a product feature.
First-order effects
- App developers building on iOS would hand first-contact authentication to the platform account, cutting their own registration flows and the user data those forms capture.
- Apple and Google gain a new gatekeeping surface inside every third-party app without shipping any code themselves — the OS is already there.
Second-order effects
- Services lose the direct customer relationship at the moment of signup, shifting leverage over retention, communication, and data portability toward whichever storefront owns the credential.
- Web-only identity providers face a structural squeeze: their value proposition assumes the browser, while the fastest-growing app surface routes around it.
Third-order effects
- If identity consolidates into the two endpoint owners, competition for users shifts from features to lock-in — whoever controls the credential controls switching costs, a dynamic regulators eventually scrutinize.
- The pattern points toward identity as platform infrastructure: a duopoly-provided utility that individual services consume, with privacy expectations and antitrust pressure setting its terms.
The trend: Digital identity is migrating from per-service accounts into the hands of whoever owns the endpoint, making mobile OS vendors the default custodians of user authentication.