Google too steps towards supporting OpenID now. However, nowadays supporting OpenID has started to take different meanings. Most of the new supporters are providing OpenID, none of them accepting it. So, even if the likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL support OpenID, I have to manage a different account and login credentials with each of them. Were we not out to beat exactly that with OpenID!?
It is great that Google is also trying to combine OAuth and OpenID to offer an identification + authentication system. However, there is a twist to the tale in this case. It has introduced some non-OpenID steps in the workflow for using Google ID to login to other services that support OpenID. Would this mean that the services would have to do something more than supporting the open standard to play along with Google? If so, I hope that Google intends to use its findings and further develop the OpenID standard, instead of coming up with its own unique implementation.
OpenID is already being harmed because the likes of Yahoo! and Google want to hide it from the end user citing usability and simplicity reasons. I wonder if it would be better if they try to educate the user instead of playing to the Baby duck syndrome. Interesting time ahead, especially since these big players can either leverage OpenID and make it accessible to the common man or they can kill it by wrapping their own proprietary systems around it.
