Microsoft, Google To Use Open ID

Both Microsoft and Google have released plans that will bring their users into the Open ID scheme.

Open ID is meant to eliminate the headaches of remembering different passwords and user names for different services and websites. At its heart, if you have an Open ID identifier, you simply sign into that, and it can be used to log into all member sites and services.

The service has now received a major boost as both Microsoft and Google have released plans to sign in their users to Open ID, joining Yahoo and AOL, the BBC reports.

Curiously, Google and Microsoft have had seats on the board of the Open ID Foundation since last year; it’s just taken them a while to release these tools, which should add another 400 million people to the scheme. Microsoft has said it expects Windows Live users to be enrolled next year.

Currently around 10,000 sites accept Open ID for a login.