To few OpenID relying parties

I’ve been play with OpenID for a day now, reading up on the specification and setting up a test server to figure out the parts that I didn’t quit understand. I’ve also been playing with logging on to different OpenID enabled sites and trying to locate sites that would consume an OpenID have revealed something interesting.

Most of the sites that say they support OpenID are lying. What MySpace, Microsoft Live, Google and even WordPress.com have saying, when they claim to support OpenID, is “Let our login be the only login you’ll even need, you can trust us”. This is stupid, currently I have an easier time finding a provider than a consuming site.

I’m not sure if there are to many providers, but at least there are to many stupid providers, who all want to be at the center of your online privacy. The big websites doesn’t seem to happy to let other providers authenticate their users for some reason, but why is that, why can’t I check my Google Mail using my Microsoft Live OpenID or write a blog entry on WordPress.com with MySpace as a provider.

If I’m only able to use OpenID on smaller sites, then OpenID loses a bit of its appeal. I think that providers should be forced to also be a consumer of OpenIDs, everything else is just silly.

Using Google as your OpenID provider.

For some reason not that many people noticed that you can now use Google as your OpenID provider.

Google said that they’re not quit done yet, meaning that you can’t use gmail.com as you’re authentication url just yet, but it’s coming.

What you can do is use “https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id” as your OpenID url and that will allow you to use your Gmail login as an OpenID.