Yahoo Implements OpenID, sticks with open standards

Yahoo! has finally jumped behind the OpenID standard and deals yet another strike at the heart of Google and Microsoft’s Hailstorm. So far the best angle I have seen on this story comes from my very good friend Dana Epp, who questions if Yahoo! is going to trust others as much as it wants others to trust it.

But this is a far bigger blow to the likes of Google and Microsoft, two companies that desperately want to control our information and our entrance to the Internet. Microsoft’s already long failed Passport was the first attempt, Google’s entry into Profiles and content sharing is the latest. Both failed, miserably, on their implementation.

Mostly because we do not trust them.

Microsoft failed because of the questionable company ethics in a climate that had every country on the planet trying to punish the big bad Microsoft. Google failed when it launched Profiles and shared feeds because Google decided to be the arbiter of who is your friend and who isn’t. Much like permission based marketing, not everyone you have an email address for is a good candidate to be contacted, much less to have data shared with.

So this is good news, in my opinion.

Every time there was a decentralized system, we won.

Every time the company was artificially given leeway to abuse their property, they did. Verisign with the SSL certificates charging $900 for domain (now even under $10), Network Solutions charging $100 per year for a domain name (now under $10 and mostly free).

Consider the areas that nobody had any ownership over. SMTP, IRC, POP, IMAP, HTTP. The companies that were given artificial control over IP did all they could to milk it and inhibit access to it. On the other hand, the open protocols and systems have lead to nothing but the growth and innovation, at all angles benefiting the bigger companies.

Kudos to Yahoo! for sticking back with the open standards, and perhaps the other big players will also understand just why they have such a large market to begin with.