I stumbled in to this article earlier. We're all use to hearing how bad Microsoft is, with their Embrace & Extend world domination plans, but for a change Microsoft have just embraced something this time and not turned it in to a Microsoft only party, whereas GOOGLE has embraced Open-ID then tricked it out so much it's incompatible with ALL other Open-ID *cough* standards.

Great work Google, you're well on the way to pimping Open-ID as a Google product, and along the way totally ignoring standards and derailing a public effort. Me thinks Google is punch drunk from the hits they get on their search engine, they are turning in to different kind of underdog now, one more dangerous than the so called monopoly giant Microsoft. I'm hoping Google with sober up a bit here, and try to influence the Open-ID market rather than continuing to fork the Open-ID standard and campaign and promote their standard over others.

One aspect of this story caught my eye, lock-in. Anyone that wants to implement Google-ID on their website needs to get approved by .. Google! Nice lock-in! Reminds me of the Apple Store, where applications are tossed out for spurious reasons, due to Apple being the control freaks that they are.

He who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones as they say (referring here to Microsoft bending standards on a regular basis, erm HTML and XML for example?!?!), so I’ve toned down the rant. Aside to say well done Microsoft for embracing the standard and boo hoo to Google for trying to put in to place a world domination plan that'll end up with us signing over our first born to the search goliath!

Read the complete post at http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/r0b/archive/2008/10/30/talking-of-open-id.aspx