Why use OpenID? – A matter of choice (and consolidation)

One of the advantages of OpenID is that it enabled you, the user, to consolidate various accounts on various web sites into one (or more, if you have more than one OpenID) identity. Of course you get the side benefit of having only one login and password to use, but for the sake of this argument, that’s a side effect :-) . This is a choice that was never available prior to OpenID, and when it does exist in the form of Google Accounts/Yahoo BBAuth/Microsoft Passport Live ID it allows you access to the provider’s web sites and assets and a handful of 3rd party sites that supports that vendor’s authentication protocol. [Read More]

OpenID Vendor Lock-In (sort of)

Continuing my previous post about OpenID and Vendor Lock-In, a reader of this blog named Andrew commented on the previous post about a problem he had with MyOpenID.com and Zooomr. He has some valid points here which I wanted to highlight in this post (he also had some points that I think can be easily fixed or that are actually a non issue). You can also read my complete answer to Andrew here. [Read More]