Yahoo to support OpenID single sign-on

People with a Yahoo user name and password will be able to use that ID information
to access non-Yahoo Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework,
reducing the amount of different log-in information people need to create, remember
and enter online.

Already, almost 10,000 Web sites support OpenID, an open framework available
for free to end users and Web site operators alike, according to the OpenID
Foundation.

Yahoo's move will triple the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million by adding
its 248 million active registered users to the rolls, the company said Thursday.

OpenID addresses one of several issues related to giving people more control
of their online activities. Other groups are focusing on data portability, to
let people move around the data and content they create online, so that they
don't have to enter it manually in, say, every social-networking site they sign
up for.

Yet other initiatives, like Google's OpenSocial,
aim to create standard interfaces so that developers can create applications
that run in multiple social-networking sites, instead of having to rewrite the
same application multiple times for every site.

For all of these initiatives, it's critical for major Internet players to get
involved, so that the benefits of standard technology and methods developed
by groups like OpenID can have a real-world impact.

Unsurprisingly, in Thursday's statement, Scott Kveton, the OpenID Foundation's
chairman, hailed Yahoo's support as a crucial validation of the framework that
will help spur its adoption by other large Web site operators.

Other major players that have expressed interest and gotten involved in varying
degrees with OpenID include Google,
Six Apart, AOL, Sun,
Novell and Microsoft.

Yahoo's announcement doesn't come as a complete surprise, since signs that
it had been working on an OpenID implementation had surfaced. For example, a
short message in the domain me.yahoo.com
indicating the company would act as an identity provider for OpenID was spotted
last week.

Yahoo participated in the development of version 2.0 of the OpenID framework,
which the company said provides new security features. Yahoo users who log in
to third-party OpenID sites should know that the log-in process doesn't reveal
e-mail or instant-message addresses, Yahoo said Thursday.

Yahoo's initial OpenID service
will be available in public beta on Jan. 30 and the company is working with
several partners, including Plaxo, so that the Yahoo ID will work on their sites
that day.