Perhaps it is because many less savvy users fail to grasp the concept of a URL serving as their identity, and find the whole OpenID system to be extremely confusing. This may result in lots of support tickets / complaints, complaints lead to hate and hate leads to suffering.

Sorry to be a hater. I was gung ho OpenID for a while...simple for users, decentralized. But then I tried to get my wife and my mom to log into my site with it and they were baffled. "Login with Facebook" they can sort of get. And then I found that the openid consumer I wrote (I used some library, I don't remember which) didn't work with yahoo and a bunch of other providers, which really got my goat.

But when I said I was happy OpenID was gone, it was more because I think we're one step closer to whatever will be a better, widely-accepted, and more polished solution, not because of any particular disdain for openid. I'm fascinated that Facebook would join OpenID. http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/facebook-throws.html. Sounds like a fox in the henhouse to me.