Some months ago it was big news for OpenID. Yahoo was the first big player to announce the YahooID system as a valid OpenID provider, a crucial step that brought some long desired support from major players to the movement. Some weeks ago, Microsoft did the same with their Live accounts, and Google could only follow.
Awesome, right? Well, no. In fact, all that these companies are doing is marketing OpenID as one of those features that everyone claps at, but few stop to realize it means nothing to the movement.
Let's think. Although I already had an OpenID at myopenid.net, I now have my GoogleID has an OpenID, great. Where can I sign in with it? Surely at Flickr from Yahoo, which is an OpenID supporter, right? Actually, no. Well, perhaps on Live Maps this OpenID may be useful. Wrong again. So, what does it mean to me, the OpenID user, to have so many major companies endorsing the system? Zero.
Please, stop trying to turn every existing ID into an OpenID, what we want is not that. We end up having all our previous ID's being all valid OpenIDs, for usage on the same all small sites. Start giving some utility to the feature you're giving us!
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