Big News for OpenID

In further evidence that OpenID is about to go mainstream in a big way, the big players in the consumer identity space – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Verisign (along with IBM) – have joined the OpenID foundation, and are even going to have representatives on the board of directors. Tireless OpenID advocate (and board member) Johannes Ernst has a great blog post about it here, and you can read more about this move here.

While some worry that the entry of such corporate entities could change the focus of what (till now) has been a community and consumer-oriented project, I weigh that against the fact that OpenID would not be relevant in consumer identity unless these players not only accepted it, but championed it. So I think this is a great thing for OpenID.

I am hoping the next step will be that these services start accepting 3rd party OpenIDs instead of just being providers. I look forward to using my Google OpenID at Yahoo.