Google announced Tuesday that it is offering to its users the possibility to use their Google account as an OpenID account.
OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity; this basically means that once you created an account with an OpenID compatible site you should be able to use the same account to log in to the services of all others OpenID compatible sites … at least in theory.
The now three major OpenID providers, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google are offering the OpenID feature to allow their users to login to third-party sites, but at the same time they are not allowing the login to their own services; so for example you cannot use Google Picasa by logging in with a MSN Live account, as you still need a full Google account.
While this paradox seems limiting, I think it still is a step forward to make publicity to the OpenID potentials; and once it is indeed popular and quite standard they may even decide to make another step and fully support it.
Links
OpenID: http://openid.net/;
Google’s announcement: http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2008/10/federated-login-for-google-account.html.
