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Google building their own Passport-like mousetrap.

factoryjoe.com — "Web2.0 should have been the “great wide opening” — that is, where you could be in utter control of your data and move it in and out of services at your whim ... But there’s a new trend, seen in Google’s spreading account authentication that foretells of the inevitable Passport-like lock-in that sunk Microsoft the first go ’round"

Who dugg this?

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  • factoryjoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, a few points of clarification:

    1. It's not so much about lock-in as it is that Google can steamroll over independent competition because of their ability to integrate and cross-promote services. In the first bubble, they called this synergy and it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's better for users, but worse for upstart competitors.
    2. As web apps become the norm, being able to move your data between them will become essential, and since almost all web apps require some form of authentication, you need to be able to share your credentials between these web apps to transfer the data.
    3. Microsoft Word already runs on OSX and so you already can copy and paste data between it and Appleworks. My point is that that's not the case on the web today. Because commercial use of APIs are restricted, you have to wait for companies to forge business deals before you get the kind of interop that you already have between different company's desktop-based applications.
    4. I feel that my view is squarely looking at reality and what will happen if we don't open up data formats and authentication protocols. I am placing my hope on microformats and OpenID -- not because I care so much about the technology, but because until we have open standards for transferring data and open protocols for authenticating, it's going to continue to be a disempowering situation for your typical end user.
  • robweber, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1The author makes this out to be a big deal but it really isn't. of course a company like google is going to create an account system to allow people access, seamlessly, to google's various services. the author contends that this is bad because it will "lock" you in to google's services and that he expects you should be able to transfer data between (as an example) your Yahoo and Google accounts. This is just stupid. Yahoo and Google are companies, and they are providing their services for free, they are not going to just open up products they have developed to allow free exchange between competitors. at one point the author even suggests that micrsoft and apple should form an alliance so that you can cut and paste from MS word to Apple Works (let's ignore problems people might see with this based on the fact you couldn't run both OS's on a computer at the same time and cut and paste like that, except for maybe virtual machines).

    bottom line is the opinion of this author is severly flawed and he needs to wake up and take a good look at reality.

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