Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! all join OpenID

Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! all join OpenID:

This morn­ing the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven com­mu­nity mem­bers with the goal of help­ing pro­mote, pro­tect and enabling the OpenID tech­nolo­gies and com­mu­nity. Today’s announce­ment marks a mile­stone in the matu­rity and impact that the OpenID com­mu­nity has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stew­ard­ship role around the community’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any deci­sions about the spec­i­fi­ca­tions the com­mu­nity is col­lab­o­ra­tively building.

It cer­tainly would be nice to just use, say, my Google login every­where, instead of cre­ate 10,000 dif­fer­ent user­names and pass­words. Note to self: check for legal, per­haps con­trac­tual, impli­ca­tions…