Currently, OpenID supports these login accounts:
- AOL (openid.aol.com/screenname)
- Google Blogger (blogname.blogspot.com)
- Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/username)
- LiveDoor (profile.livedoor.com/username)
- LiveJournal (username.livejournal.com)
- Orange – France Telecom (http://openid.orange.fr/)
- SmugMug (username.smugmug.com)
- Technorati (technorati.com/people/technorati/username)
- Vox (member.vox.com)
- Yahoo (http://openid.yahoo.com)
- WordPress.com (username.wordpress.com)
The good news is, Google has now decided to support OpenID too!
So what’s OpenID and why you should care?
Usually whenever you want to use a service on a web site, you have to register an account with them. Since one service cannot do all that you want, you usually end up with having multiple login accounts with multiple passwords on multiple web sites.
So what is OpenID? OpenID allows you to sign in to many web services using one web identity, eliminating the “different account for different services” completely. Imagine if you can use your YahooID to login to all of your favorite web sites. That means you need to only remember 1 login for every web services that you are using.
Most people will either use Yahoo Mail, Google Mail (Gmail), or Windows Live Hotmail as one of their email accounts. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can use your email login (whatever you are using) to other web services as well, eliminating the need to remember usernames and passwords on your head?
Unfortunately, this “migration” process will take a while and it will be some time before we can login using our Google Account on all OpenID supported sites.
For more information about this news, check out Google’s official blog post about the move here.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
the openid is a good idea, i think google see this too
Thanks for explaining in simple terms. Will these open id’s leave users more vulnerable to hacking not just one account but every account stored? If a user has accounts at each of these isn’t some computer some where, looking for my stored passwords to allow entry to each site with out logging a different log in?
Wow, this is gonna be great! I hate signing in to every single site separately, google rocks
It is a great news. I too have an open id
Well I guess that’s the bad side of it. Once someone knows your username on Google, say, that means he/she can login to all those OpenID supported sites
So make sure your password is not something like ABC or “password”
Well, I’ve read a book about internet security last week, and as it turns out, cracking such an account is no such big deal, and your password doesn’t really matter, in fact even I could easily do that with the methods described in the book, but why would I?
Going to jail for a few hundred bucks is not really worth it
I didn’t really know what it was, it’s something I’ve see often, but just ignored.
Now that I know what it is, I think it’s a great idea…and hopefully the near future.
It would be scary though if someone got just one password from you, then could log into everything…so would have to think about it.
it’s a good idea but a bit confused why google taking part in.
Well this might be a good idea because resolves us the problem of having multiple logins but I agree with michael what about if someone gets our username and password? Would have access to all our services. In my opinion I will keep using the standard way of login using multiple logins to avoid user and pass theft problems.
Google goes into almost anything that is profitable.. Strong backings..
Whether you like it or not, once a site supports logging in with OpenID, you are “exposed” if someone else has known your Google/Yahoo,etc password.
There’s no option to opt-out your accounts from services that support OpenID at this stage
Yes I have found Open ID to be quite useful but I can see how that “Whether you like it or not, once a site supports logging in with OpenID, you are “exposed” if someone else has known your Google/Yahoo,etc password.” could be a problem.