Simpler Access to Flickr for Google Users with OpenID

OpenID momentum continues to grow. Yahoo! announced that Google users can now sign up for a new account on Flickr’s photo-sharing service with their Google Account information, eliminating the need to create a new username and password. Flickr joins other websites such as Plaxo and Facebook that also support this simpler registration process for Google users.

Google and Yahoo! are two of the many companies who have been involved with the OpenID community’s efforts to improve the process for how users log in and sign up for online services. For example, last month Google announced its use of OpenID to make it simpler for Yahoo! users to sign up for Google services.

While Google doesn’t yet support the use of OpenID for replacing passwords on its own sites, we’re involved in the OpenID community’s efforts to research how to best implement that type of support. Yahoo!’s announcement today is another step in defining those best practices. We look forward to discussing this new feature at next week’s Internet Identity Workshop where the identity community gathers to discuss how to further accelerate the adoption of standards like OpenID.

By Eric Sachs, Internet Identity Team