"Google just released the Account Authentication Proxy for Web-Based Applications -- which looks a lot like Passport. According to the website, this proxy lets web-based applications create services protected by a Google Account by enabling a web application to get an authentication token without ever handling the user's account login information. The user must log into their account using a Google supplied login page and grant limited access to the web application," says ZD Net's Googling Google blog.
"Web applications, if granted, can access certain information associated with that users Google account -- for example Google Calendar events. Users explicitly have to give websites access to their services before any of their data will be shared."
Comment: Or not. Although several blogs have linked to the Google page, and Googling Gooogle has a screen shot, the link no longer works.
Passport does the authentication when you log into Hotmail, and was a key part of Microsoft's programmable web vision, called Microsoft.net. About six years ago, Passport spooked Sun into organising the Liberty Alliance to create an open alternative, which aims to have "more than one billion Liberty-enabled identities and devices ... by the end of 2006".
So, based on what you know, do you think Google will: (a) join in with what looks like an emerging open industry standard; or (b) throw its weight behind Sxip's Indentity 2.0; or (c) introduce its own system because Google can do whatever it likes?
PS: Sxip is pronounced "skip".
