Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

http://recode.net/2014/03/04/yahoo-to-end-facebook-google-sign-in-on-its-web-properties/

by alook • 12 years ago

57 51 12 years ago

camus2• 12 years ago

Still, I imagine the grand plan is to make Yahoo “cool enough” that people will actually want to use a Yahoo ID consistently. We’ll see how that one goes.

For what? as a consumer,what service Yahoo does offer that would make me want to get a yahoo id?

As a developper ,Yahoo has a few interesting services but that's it. Yahoo's shopping spree is over but it did not make it more relevant.

frankc• 12 years ago

Yahoo has a good fantasy sports platform. They might be the leader there though espn may have passed them by now.

alook• 12 years ago

Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3].

Seems like they're giving people a reason to use their products, and then making a play to have an OAuth-level relationship with the users. Maybe they want visibility into how a user authorizes third-party apps (FB gets an awful lot of insight from FB connect!) or maybe they just want to solidify their user lock-in.

Either way, I can't imagine they justified the engineering work for massive redesign on seemingly not-profitable properties like Weather/Flickr without having a solid long-term plan for how to capitalize on that.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/15/yahoo-weather-android-red... [2] http://blog.flickr.net/en/2013/05/20/a-better-brighter-flick... [3] http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/03/yahoo-sports-gets-ios-7-red...

PakG1• 12 years ago

This is the main reason why I have my Yahoo ID. I've been involved in many fantasy leagues on many platforms and Yahoo's has consistently been the best one year-in, year-out.

ghshephard• 12 years ago

Yahoo has an excellent Financial Portfolio / Stock Tracking Site. I go there pretty much every day to track how things are doing.

specialp• 12 years ago

Yahoo runs many services that have traffic that most start-ups here would die for. Number one finance site,number one news site, huge fantasy sports, Flickr, Delicious, significant search traffic. People on HN tend to dismiss them but we are indeed talking one of the most trafficked websites on Earth. I would say there is more value having a Yahoo ID than most other sites due to how much they offer.

joecomotion• 12 years ago

Delicious left Big Purple long ago.

kevincrane2• 12 years ago

It's not popular but I think Yahoo Mail is way better than a lot of people give it credit for as well.

chris_wot• 12 years ago

The same services that you would use had you logged in with Facebook or Google?

fourstar• 12 years ago

I look forward to this being a trend that continues.

saltysugar• 12 years ago

My flickr account is created with Google login. I wonder whether they'll force me into singing up for Flickr cause it's the service with most storage for photos out there (albeit the lack of desktop sync).

null_ptr• 12 years ago

Good! The less that people see Google and Facebook accounts as "Global Internet Identity Accounts", the better.

wise_young_man• 12 years ago

I disagree. The more people use Social login and the less people use their one shared password on all sites which tends to be "password1", the better.

nitrogen2• 12 years ago

The user's single identity should be owned by the user and managed securely by the browser, not by Facebook or Google.

microtonal2• 12 years ago

It's a bit of an improvement. On the other hand, if that one account is hacked, it gives access to everything else as well. Moreover, you can even get a list of applications/sites tied to that account. Which makes it arguably even less secure.

If we want people to be safer, we should learn them how to use a password manager to generate a unique password for every site.

And since access to passwords requires two things (the password to the password manager and the password database), it's arguably more secure, even with a weak password.

kirillzubovsky• 12 years ago

It's alright, Yahoo audience probably haven't heard of Facebook yet anyway. </sarcasm>

In all seriousness though, this is a good thing. FB login has become so prevalent, that not having it hurts more than it helps. At the same time, they used to change APIs so often, that keeping it working was a royal pain.

Although it's much easier to implement these days, especially with services like http://hull.io, it's yet another part of one's site/app to worry about.

Good for Yahoo!

lnanek2• 12 years ago

I can't remember my Yahoo login, I may have had one a decade ago. I don't really buy their excuse that removing social login helps in any way. As a developer, with social login, I have a username to link everything to just as much as normal server login. You can still have user records in your DB keyed on that, a settings page on your site that stores settings against that user, whatever you need. So how does removing social login improve personalization? I don't think it does. Just sounds like an excuse.

mydogmuppet• 12 years ago

I have never been able to sigh into Flickr with anything other than by Facebook ID. All attempts by me/Yahoo to create an Yahoo ID that wasn't locked in some self defeating loop failed.

I've never been a fan of Yahoo or for that matter Hotmail; they force an ID on you which is then hijacked by their email servers to spam all your contacts...again...and again.

Why can't Yahoo just die gracefully ? Why do they have to inflict their death throes on Flickr Users ?

blueskin_4• 12 years ago

I wonder how many of the 10 remaining Yahoo users will be inconvenienced by this.

Seriously though, this is a good thing - third party sign in is a horrible idea and should die.

ampersandy• 12 years ago

Why is it a horrible idea? I worked on the Site Integrity team at Facebook and I can assure you that protecting people's accounts from attackers is a fundamentally hard problem that very few companies are actually equipped to handle.

tobiasu• 12 years ago

Ah yes, the good samaritians over at facefuck, providing a service for free. (Leave it to us, you're too stupid to handle this...)

Your disgusting business motives and my (consumer) interests do not align, at all.

blueskin_4• 12 years ago

Because it adds a single point of failure, and erodes privacy by irrevocably linking accounts. There have also been security fails with many single sign in systems (including at Facebook...).

joelrunyon• 12 years ago

I would say you have a very bubble-ized perspective of who actually uses Yahoo. You'd be amazed at the non-tech people that aggregate on their services.

rplnt2• 12 years ago

Third party sign in might not be ideal, but having to register for every crappy service and website is much much worse.

And flickr or tumblr have quite a bit more users than you've guessed.

blueskin_4• 12 years ago

That's why people have KeePass, or even LastPass if they are overly trusting of third parties.

Having a different password for every service is more secure than one for everything.

Fuxy• 12 years ago

Who in their right mind would use their FB login on other websites anyway.

I personally tend to avoid it like the plague.

Every time you use it you grant another website access to your Facebook profile data.

I don't think i want to share that.

Now i know there's some security there but honestly I don't thrust it Facebook is leaky enough as it is I would rather not push my luck by giving permissions to unnecessary things.

bencoder2• 12 years ago

I tried to sign up recently with yahoo to access a yahoo group and they demanded a phone number which I didn't want to give them, so I gave up.

mertd• 12 years ago

(123) 456 7890 wouldn't work?

bencoder2• 12 years ago

no, it required a confirmation text/phone call

roberjo• 12 years ago

Are we going to move back toward more 'walled-garden eco-systems' to protect the brand and improve internal lock-in of customer cash? Le Sigh.

Donzo• 12 years ago

If you want to use Yahoo services, you're going to need to have a hacked email account.

stefan_kendall32• 12 years ago

Unless I really, really, really want to use a service, I only use it if I can login with gmail or facebook.

I don't have time for your shit registration form or strange password requirements. I'm always logged into gmail and facebook, so those are always one-click accounts for me.

I understand wanting to become the identity provider, but the ship has sailed here.

mark_l_watson2• 12 years ago

Do you do your web browsing always logged into gmail and facebook? No criticism intended.

I use Chrome for accessing gmail, facebook, twitter, and linkedin - always logged in. For everything else I use Firefox with strong privacy settings. No overhead for me to do this, and this seems like a reasonable middle-road for privacy.

stefan_kendall32• 12 years ago

Yup, I do. I maintain pretty strict control of my physical security of the laptop. If anyone gets access to my physical goods, I have much bigger problems.

cordite• 12 years ago

I WAS going to post that the only reason why I'd probably post a comment on this article was because the web is meant to be integrated.

But it seems they wanted me to sign up for an account first on recode. sigh

I thought LiveFyre was going to handle that. Hitting back also meant I lost my message.

Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

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