Google has announced two important changes to its OpenID API. The first is new a popup window interface with fewer redirects and a much streamlined experience for users. The second change is that sites now have access to more data like your first and last name, preferred language, country, and more (assuming you allow the site in question to access that data).
It's no secret that OpenID is confusing for many users. Because OpenID isn't owned by any one company, websites supporting OpenID can implement it in very different ways, and often the OpenID experience lacks the simplicity and UI polish of alternatives like Facebook Connect.
Google's revamped interface and workflow are designed to address common problems with OpenID and make the user experience easier.
As OpenID advocate David Recordon writes on the OpenID blog, the new streamlined interface means that users signing into sites "now have a much better user experience, one on par with Facebook Connect."
Google's redesigned OpenID interface and workflow isn't just something the company worked out on its own, it's actually part of the OpenID User Interface Extension Specification, which is an attempt to standardize and refine the OpenID user experience.
The good news for users is that the recommendations in the UI Spec are catching on with OpenID providers -- JanRain, another OpenID provider has also announced a similar overhaul for its OpenID interface and API.
Of course, while it may seem obvious to those who use it, the new Google OpenID interface does not replace to older method and converting a site use the new interface is left up to the site's developers. If you'd like to see an example of the new interface, head over to UserVoice, which has already integrated the new system.
While it's nice to see UserVoice jumping on the new interface and making the experience a little smoother, if you click through to the site you'll see another problem with web identity -- there's seven ways to login to the site.
While we like choice when it comes to using the web, at some point choice overwhelms users -- what do you do if, like us, you have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, an OpenID identity and a Yahoo identity? Which one do you choose?
Quite frankly, it's a mess. And the problem isn't unique to UserVoice, even logging in to leave a comment on a blog is becoming a study in the who's who of web identity providers.
The original idea was that there would be a single identity -- your OpenID. But of course that's not how it worked out. Just about every site on the web wants to be your identity provider and figuring out which one you should choose is hard for less web-savvy users.
If the history of the web is any indicator, eventually one of these identity providers will end up the de facto choice for most users. But in the mean time, while OpenID is improving, the larger problem of where to host your identity remains.
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