Yahoo! Picks Up on OpenID Standard

It’s not a simple task to unleash a new web-standard and hope that it catches on, but OpenID has just been awarded a huge win – Yahoo! is picking up on the technology. OpenID is a new web-standard for the typical login system. Instead of requiring a username/password, an OpenID site would allow you to log in via your OpenID identifier.

One benefit of OpenID is that your single ID would be universally recognized (assuming all websites pick up on the technology eventually), and since the password is not stored in a centralized location (such as remote web-server), it seems like the perfect solution. However, security risks will no doubt arise as time passes, but with further revisions to the standard, methods should become near-bullet-proof. Once widely adopted, OpenID should prove the ultimate logon-solution. It’s one web-standard I am looking forward to seeing implemented.

Yahoo, which counts its registered users at 248 million worldwide, says that supporting OpenID will mean that OpenID-compatible accounts are available to a total of 368 million Web users. When Yahoo’s support of OpenID goes live, starting with a public beta launch on January 30, this will mean that a Yahoo ID can be consolidated into an OpenID account that will be valid at all partner sites.

Source: The Social