Your Gmail Account is Now An OpenID

It's pretty BS... Software built around OpenID needs to be rewritten to detect when http://username@domain.tld/ is entered as a OpenID login and if it's @gmail.com address, contact Google's OpenID servers.

From the comments on the original story at Blogspot:

This is because http://username@domain.tld/ is a valid URL and can thus be used as an OpenID.

The problem is that while that may very well be a valid URI, it's not a standard URI and OpenID software hasn't been written to use this kind of mechanism.

To make matters even worse, there is no OpenID server set up at gmail.com - servers need to put a special case for when the @tld.com matches gmail and contact the appropriate OpenID servers in that case.. it's basically Google demanding that you authenticate their users on their terms.

Test results for OpenID: http://openidenabled.com/resources/openid-test/diagnose-serv... http://openidenabled.com/resources/openid-test/diagnose-serv...

EDIT

Here's the link to the Google OpenID documentation for developers, it's even more bloated than I thought:

http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OpenID.html

You need to ask Google to give you the URI to the OpenID endpoint for a given account. Each account has a different OpenID endpoint, and different incoming requests are routed to different endpoints....

And I quote:

3. The web application sends a "discovery" request to Google to get information on the Google authentication endpoint. This is a departure from the process outlined in OpenID 1.0.

4. Google returns an XRDS document, which contains endpoint address.

5. The web application sends a login authentication request to the Google endpoint address. This action redirects the user to a Google Federated Login page.

They're being pretty damn cavalier about using an OpenID that's not really OpenID in the first place.

It's great that the big three are now OpenID providers, but the platform is still almost useless to me until they are also "relying parties."

Would it be possible to merge multiple accounts such that my Microsoft and Yahoo accounts are consistent with my Google one? Can I migrate an account to my own provider?

I hate how all the big players (Yahoo, Microsoft, Google) are implementing the OpenID provider half of OpenID, but refuse to be consumers of OpenIDs from other providers. It really defeats the purpose of OpenID. I'd even call it arrogant. Though I suppose it's better than a completely proprietary system like Facebook Connect.

It's painfully obvious they just want to remain in complete control, while reaping some of the benefits of OpenID. I'm really hoping this will backfire on all of them, and OpenID becomes hugely popular to the point where users demand they become real OpenID consumers. It's going to take awhile though.

Google are just testing an approach called "federated login" which they think is the usability solution to the so called "URL problem" which is that Joe Average doesn't know what a URL is or how it should be formatted let alone what his or her URL is. Obviously MySpace users do, but there is also an implication from Google that all users are comfortable using an email address. Many of the younger demographic use FB messaging or YIM for communication and only use their email for "official things".

There was a lot of discussion about all these issue at http://therealmccrea.com/2008/10/20/live-blogging-the-openid... and all the interested parties want to resolve this. I should know I spent the day with them there.

Read the original article on Google's Blog

http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-moves...

They don't want to add just another OpenID to the mix. They want to leave people with the same signup procedure they're used to (ie. enter your email). However, if they enter an @gmail.com address, the server automagically figures out how to log them in using OpenID.

It's a good idea in theory, but seems like it will require a fair amount of rewrite on the OpenID library side. Not a big fan of that...

Actual link: http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-moves...

Actually this is terrible. This massively increases the chance of my mum getting hit by a phishing attack. Not happy google - you should have thought this one through.

:( sad day IMO. OpenID is a nice idea but fatally flawed in the grand scheme of things. Unified accounts are GREAT. But OpenID just isn't the right way to go about it...

I knew Google was moving towards this but I always hoped they would see sense before actually going for it fully.

Disappointed in them for the first time in a LONG time!

Great, now "all three" provide it and it's still a complete cluster $%^& to use, manage, code against and maintain.

Previous discussion about confusion caused by openid can be found here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=334800

[Edit: Added link]

I wish OpenID was more seamless on the end-user side. Then, there would be absolutely no reason to not support it.

I'm having trouble finding the URL scheme to use... or does this only support signing in with email@gmail.com?