Google has been a big backer of OpenID, though that’s not exactly a surprise when you have the login standard’s creator, Brad Fitzpatrick, working for you. Fitzpatrick has announced that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenID logins. He has also added that WebFinger for Gmail now supports Google Profiles as well. While any push forward on this front is a good thing, OpenID, in its current form, has several problems and this definitely doesn’t solve them.
Adding Google Profiles to the list of sites which can be used as an OpenID identity may be convenient for some people, those already using OpenID or, at least, those who understand it. Google Profiles URLs are easy enough to remember and relatively short, something like http://www.google.com/profiles/user.name. But, it’s probably not going to drive adoption and certainly not solve the bigger issue.
There are several groups trying to tackle the online identity problem. With tens or hundreds of sites and services each with their login information and system it can be a nightmare to handle them all. Most people just use the same user name and password, but this opens up a whole lot of potential security issues. For a couple of years several solutions have popped up which promise one set of credentials working across a myriad of sites.
One of the … (read more)