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Entries for label: openid

Found 3 entries.

Finally, OpenID for Google Accounts

Google has just announced that it is allowing OpenID for ALL of it's user accounts.

It's weird though since it is calling it Federated Login when in fact it really should state the fact it is is enabling OpenID (I had to double check just to make sure it was). Over on the Google Code Blog however, they're being a bit more technical :-) and actually saying so - Google Moves Towards Single Sign on with OpenID.

Overall, this is great news. Yes, Blogger has allowed OpenID for a while and there was that little test with Google App Engine, but this is what we've wanted for a long time.

There are very few companies now who don't accept OpenID and very few of the big ones (with lots of users) who don't provide OpenID.

So hopefully in the near future you'll just need one OpenID, and therefore one password, to log in to as many sites as you use. Of course, you'll be able to have as many OpenIDs as you want but that's your choice.

There seems to be some interesting things going on with each of the new people accepting Google Accounts by their email address rather than traditionally by their OpenID URLs. I suspect that this is just a predefined step over the first contact the website consumer has to do when first contacting the provider. I'll probably post further into why this is happening another time.

But anyway, that's beside the point.

Now all we need to do is make Google, Yahoo! AOL and all the others accept OpenIDs!

It's a long slow road, but we're eventually getting there.

Labels: openid, google, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, yahoo

Inserted: 2008-10-30 13:06 (3 years, 3 months ago)

Why Google App Engine Locks You in Even More

The original title for this blog entry was "What's the difference between Google and Facebook?" Answer: Google is even worse than Facebook.

Let me explain what I mean by that and then I'll tell you why I changed it.

Google have finally entered the cloud-computing world for us mere developer mortals, a whole two years after Amazon gave us S3, EC2 and other web services. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'd think I'd be excited about this piece of news.

But I'm not and here's why.

Cloud computing, massively parrallel systems, distributed data storage and other things like that really interest me. What I want are the basic tools such that I can mold them, manipulate them and add to them to fit my needs. Basically, I want to use them however I see fit and I want to be able to do what ever I like.

But Google App Engine doesn't let you do that. It has some nice interfaces, yes, but in reality all you get are some abstractions built atop of Google's infrastructure. A lot of people are chuffed that they can now play with GFS and BigTable but in reality, how much of that do you actually see. Not much. It's just an API to you and me. An API written in Python which can only be run on Google's infrastructure.

So let me just recap that for you. To run your app on Google's infrastructure, you must use their code, their interface, their abstractions, their (single so far) language and their environment.

All in all it doesn't give you a lot of freedom. In fact, I don't see much freedom there at all. It's no argument that you'll be able to create great applications using all this infrastructure (think Gmail and Google Reader) but it's not that that I'm arguing against. You will have some slight leeway but really, why would you do it yourself when Google's way is just so much easier?

So far, I have told you that you have to do everything on their terms. Their language, their hardware etc but let me tell you something that concerns me even more than that.

It's also the fact that you'll be using their users. An API of their own design plugging in to their Accounts. You'd be able to do it yourself, sign up and manage your own users but in an environment like that, why would you?

This all reminds me of Google Gadgets - except you can write it in Python instead of JavaScript. You also get a little bit more functionality too but you're still using their infrastructure and their users.

I don't know about you but this seems like a bad idea to me. And now we're back to what this post was originally titled.

"What's the difference between Google and Facebook?"

Answer: Google is even worse than Facebook.

Let me explain.

Facebook has created a massive walled-garden of users, with high walls and plenty of pleasures inside to get those users in and not let them out. Hotel Calinfornia if you will except you can't even check-out let alone leave.

Keep the users inside, don't let them look at the rest of the web (in some cases, pretend it doesn't even exist) and just lock them in as much as you can. Facebook has turned into a horribly closed and restrictive site. That is why I quit earlier this year.

Over the years, Google have been doing the same except the walls have been growing a little more slowly. One new application at a time. The walls have been growing taller, lock-in has been getting bigger and finally we'll realise that we're inside a huge dome built on Google's servers and no-one can find the windows. Then all we can do is watch everyone suffer under the immense pressure of using all of these apps and not ever getting away from Google hosted stuff.

Just like the applications in Facebook. Yes, techically they can be hosted wherever, but the users are still locked in.

This is all made even worse by the fact that Google also made something that would stop Facebook having the monopoly on external applications for users - namely in the shape of OpenSocial.

I have written before why I don't like Open Social. Before they told us what it was about, I was really looking forward to having authorised access to user data. That wasn't what OpenSocial turned out to be - which is sad - and all we got was the ability to put applications into other sites. Again, Google App Engine is like this but worse - the only site (in regards to users) all of these new apps will run in, is Google's.

So more apps, more users, more developers to write more apps which attract more users and hence ... you see my point. And that's exactly their point too (stated in the introduction).

Which is funny, because that really reminds me of something else too. Vendor lock-in - but this time replace software and file-formats with users and applications. That's about where Google is at the moment and it's only getting worse.

Luckily some other people are also concerned about this. I can only hope that what Francois said to me today comes true. That Google can get it wrong at the start and it can get better as time goes on. I hope he's right and I truly hope that Google's "Do No Evil" policy wins through in the end even if that is debatable sometimes.

What Google can do to alleviate some of this is allow more open access for users and their accounts. It's a two step process with a third note:

1. become an OpenID provider and make each Google Accounts an OpenID
2. become a real OpenID consumer and allow sign-ups and sign-ins to Google Accounts with OpenID
3. and no, allowing OpenID comments on Blogger and providing OpenID on Blogger in Beta is not good enough

(Note: None of these things provide technical freedom from their AppEngine infrastructure but I consider the user data is more important than that.)

I'm not holding much hope out though and whatever they do, I'm sticking to my view that Google are getting too big and too strong. At some stage in the future, their dream and marketing of an Open Web will descent into an Open Web of mostly Google Accounts and Google hosted apps and that's when we'll suffer.

But what can we do?

The easiest thing is for me to do what I did with Facebook and just quit Google. But the thought of finding replacements for all those services I'm using is too much - Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Bookmarks, Analytics and a few others I use. Some of which can be easily replaced (Magnolia for Bookmarks) but others less so (Analytics?). Now I realise I'm locked in and it doesn't sit pretty.

There's not an easy solution for this and one I'm thinking very hard about at the moment.

Earlier this evening, I finished re-watching the original Star Wars trilogy so I will leave you with a quote which seems apt for this situation. From the enigmatic Han Solo:

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

And the final thought for this post; let's just hope that Google never turn to the dark side.

Labels: openid, google, walled-gardens, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, facebook, app-engine

Inserted: 2008-04-11 00:16 (3 years, 10 months ago)

I Can't Believe I Didn't See this Before

Things are looking good in the 'open' social networking scene.

For a while now, I've been interested in OpenID, open sharing of information and also the social graph everyone is talking about.

Heck, I even told a (non-geek) friend of mine the other day that 'information wants to be free'. He was laughing at me - very hard (hi Dave).

As it turns out, all the different thoughts and plans lots of people all over the globe have been having about how to open the social network out will all be pushed aside if this happens.

The interesting thing is though, even though it might turn out to be a big launch for Google, I think they've already started with the opening out of their GData JavasScript Client Library of Calendar. And we're promised, more of their Application API's to come.

The difference between this client library and the preceding ones is that it allows anyone to mashup an application of theirs to be writable as well as readable. What this means is anyone out there on the internet can now 'program' Google's Applications using a JavaScript library. The aim of GData in the first place was to standardised their internal applications this way so it's no surprise it's now writable.

The main point about this write thing is that, to be able to write to something of yours (yes, you own it, it's your data), that means the application has to know who you are - which is authentication.

So hang on let's recap:

• random website (example.com) wants to create an application using your calendar and your friends as source data - let's say a birthday party invitation application
• they mash something together on their own website (example.com/party-invitation.html)
• you connect up, say you're andychilton_at_gmail.com and they ask Google to confirm this
• you're confirmed and you also allow the Party Invitation site to access (some of) your personal data
• you create a party, it gets added to your calendar and invites gets sent out to all your friends

Does it sound like Facebook to anyone?

Yes, but there is one big difference. To create an application, you don't have to do it inside Google as you do with Facebook, you can just go ahead and do it.

That sounds like progress to me :-)

Two other things we need to consider are authentication and the personal data we're talking about.

For authentication we already have OpenID which can say that you are the owner of this particular identity. So maybe November 5th is the big day for Google giving all of their accounts users an OpenID (yay!) Even though they don't need it and their APIs won't use it, it would be really nice of them to do it.

So, the personal data that will be used in these PWMU's (Private Writable Mash-Ups) that might be used by an application may come from Google... BUT, and this is the best bit, I suspect that anyone in the world will also able to create an application which has a PWMU API which implements all the necessary features that the GData API does.

So, finally, what does this actually mean.

It means that anyone can provide an Authentication service, anyone can be a Data service and anyone can create a Personal Writable Mash-Up service.

Sounds like decentralised control of everything - which is exactly what the proponents of the Open Social Graph problem want.

The fact that OpenID creator Brad Fitzpatrick now works for Google and is leading this project gives me even more confidence that things will go in the right direction. As the techcrunch article above states, if Facebook is 98% open, then Google will be 100% open.

And let me finish on a more personal note. I've been planning on adding OpenID to Zaapt and hence KiwiWriters in the next couple of months but let's just imagine some other possibilities. We could create an application which implements a Work In Progress API which allows you to read/write you WIP information from any mashup site. Let's say that in the future people decide to move away from KiwiWriters (let's hope not), then they can copy/move the data that they own to another site which implements the WIP API. This means that the user is free to choose the best provider they see fit AND they actually have the ability to do it. Talk about keeping providers on their toes :-)

P.S. Most of the second half of this post is speculation about what will happen, but yeah, either way, it's going to be very interesting.

Labels: openid, google, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, facebook, social-graph

Inserted: 2007-09-28 10:47 (4 years, 4 months ago)