Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/14/google-points-at-webfinger-your-gmail-address-could-soon-be-your-id/

by peter123 • 17 years ago

21 6 17 years ago

chrischen• 17 years ago

Could potentially make OpenID useful. But I think there's more potential to using a unified ID across the web than just sharing metadata. For example interaction between two services to which you have authenticated.

AndrewDucker2• 17 years ago

Well, that's OAuth - which allows you to tell each service that the other can use it.

AndrewDucker2• 17 years ago

That's great idea - I've seen Brad talk about this kind of thing back when he was heavily involved in LJ - and I think it has a lot of potential for bridging the gap between email addresses and URLs, thus meaning that anyone at all can cope with OpenID and the like.

And by making it extensible (I love the idea of the "well-known" folder on the protocol page) it can be used for a whole host of future uses. Very nicely done.

EDIT: http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/wiki/WebFingerProtocol is the protocol page.

ams6110• 17 years ago

Didn't Microsoft already try basically this, and fail spectacularly, with Passport?

anshul• 17 years ago

No. Passport was not federated, open or free in any meaningful sense.

mattlanger• 17 years ago

I'm guessing Facebook ain't exactly thrilled by this news.

Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID.

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