Google plans to announce in coming weeks that it is turning each of the one million plus Google Apps customer domains into an OpenID provider, enabling millions of people to log in to OpenID-supporting websites with their work, school or organization ID. “For these organizations,” Google Security Product Manager, Eric Sachs, wrote on the public OpenID Board mailing list this morning, “Google Apps can now become an identity and data hub for multiple SaaS providers.” Sachs appeared to believe his email was not being posted to a public board; he asked that it not be circulated so that some unusual technical work could be completed and political support shored up in the face of likely community and press cynicism. There’s good reason for that - it may not be the good news it seems to be. Sponsor But First, A Word from OpenID’s New Sponsor OpenID is important not just because it makes logging in to sites around the web easy, with one username and a secure password, but because it’s a way for people or organizations to maintain control over their own identities and data. There are no policy changes you don’t approve of when you’re in control. Google’s Sachs explained in his email that in order to pull this all off, OpenID relying parties will need to be redirected from the domain provided at user login over to Google’s OpenID service. In order for this redirect to happen, all relying parties will need to start looking for a new OpenID extension that Google has developed and implemented in conjunction with one relying party technology, JanRain’s RPX . “There is the potential for some community members (or press) to assume (or at least imply in articles) some evil intent by Google to co-opt OpenID with these extensions,” Sachs wrote today

original Source : Google To Announce Major Identity Initiative for 1 Million+ Companies and Schools