[OpenID] Press Release

[Bill Washburn]

FYI...

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=818650


 *SOURCE: OpenID Foundation*
  <http://openid.net/foundation>
Feb 07, 2008 09:00 ET
 Technology Leaders Join OpenID Foundation to Promote Open Identity
Management on the Web

OpenID Foundation to Support Internet User Single Sign-On Technology

CORVALLIS, OR--(Marketwire - February 7, 2008) - The OpenID
Foundation<http://openid.net/foundation>today announced that Google
(NASDAQ:
GOOG <http://www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?Ticker=GOOG>), IBM (NYSE:
IBM<http://www.ibm.com/investor/>),
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT <http://www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?Ticker=MSFT>),
VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN <http://www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?Ticker=VRSN>)
and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO<http://www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?Ticker=YHOO>)
have joined as its first corporate board members.

With these companies' deep expertise in Internet and security technology,
the OpenID Foundation strengthens the industry-wide effort to empower users
with portable Web identities, or OpenIDs. This effort helps ensure the
evolution of an open and interoperable Internet that helps people take
control of how their personal information is shared on-line and aids on-line
businesses to attract and retain more users by simplifying and securing the
management of digital identities.

The OpenID Foundation was formed in June 2007 to support and promote the
technology developed by the OpenID community. Members includes individuals,
students, non-profits, startups and industry giants that have come together
to develop and promote open identity management on the Web.

OpenID <http://openid.net/> is free technology that simplifies the on-line
user experience by eliminating the need for multiple user names across
Internet sites, enabling individuals to take more control and ownership of
their digital identities. This user-centric digital identity technology
helps users reduce the pain of managing dozens, even hundreds of user-names
and passwords, and provides more control over what personal information they
share with Web sites when they sign-in using an OpenID.

Today, more than 10,000 Web sites support OpenID log-ins, and an estimated
350 million OpenID enabled URLs currently exist.

"With this support from the new company board members, the OpenID Foundation
will be able to continue to promote and protect the technology and its
community moving forward," said Bill Washburn, Executive Director, OpenID
Foundation. "The community has clearly expanded since the inception of the
Foundation and these companies will help bring OpenID into the mainstream
markets."

The industry collaboration supporting OpenID extends not only to the
technology itself, but also to the establishment of the OpenID Foundation as
an open forum to promote, protect and enable the OpenID technologies and
community. The OpenID community has matured rapidly from its inception as a
loose coalition of volunteers to the establishment of the OpenID Foundation
with a strong mission and intellectual property structure that enables all
to participate in developing and implementing OpenID technology. This
progress has been made with donations of legal resources by Microsoft and
various contributions from Google, IBM, VeriSign and Yahoo!.

"Google shares the OpenID Foundation's vision of a Web that's easy to use
and built on open standards available to everyone," said Brad Fitzpatrick, a
software engineer at Google who created OpenID while at Six Apart in 2005.
"OpenID was always intended to be a decentralized sign-on system, so it's
fantastic to join a foundation committed to keeping it free and unencumbered
by proprietary extensions."

"Privacy concerns have been escalating rapidly because of repeated incidents
involving unexpected personal information loss and user identity theft,"
said Anthony Nadalin, IBM Distinguished Engineer and chief security
architect, IBM Tivoli software. "As a leader in identity, access and
federated identity management and open standards-based software, this is an
important step in IBM's collaboration with other industry leaders to
continuously enhance open source projects for user-centric identity. This
effort is intended to provide users with more control and to help them
better manage and protect their digital identities."

"The OpenID community is a key constituency in solving the digital identity
problems Internet users face, and will benefit from being represented by the
OpenID Foundation," said Kim Cameron, Microsoft's Chief Identity Architect.
"Since Bill Gates and Craig Mundie announced our collaboration with the
OpenID community last February at RSA, Microsoft has played a leading role
in establishing the Foundation's open policy framework that allows everyone
to participate in the development and use of OpenID specifications. Now, we
look forward to working with the community to refine and drive adoption of
the specifications."

"OpenID enables consumers to take control of their online identity, which in
turn will drive trust, privacy and security on the Internet," said Nico
Popp, vice president of Innovation at VeriSign, Inc. "Networked identity and
authentication services are core elements of VeriSign's current and future
service offerings. Because of this, we applaud the creation of the OpenID
foundation and we look forward to contributing to its mission."

"Yahoo! believes that a truly open Web is the key to the next-generation of
Internet experiences; OpenID furthers this cause by delivering a free,
standards-based solution that the entire industry can embrace," said Ash
Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!.
"Over the last year we have worked closely with the OpenID Foundation to
develop the organization's intellectual property framework, finalize the
OpenID 2.0 specification and to adopt OpenID for all 248 million active
registered Yahoo! users worldwide. We look forward to collaborating with the
OpenID Foundation, its board and community to further simplify the consumer
experience of the Web and empower users to take control of their online
identity with OpenID."

OpenID Technology

With the increased use of the Internet to conduct business and the rise of
new types of on-line interactions, such as social networking and
user-generated content, innovative kinds of digital identifier technologies
are necessary to sustain the "open Web." OpenID enables individuals to
convert one of their already existing digital identifiers -- such as their
personal blog's URL -- into an OpenID account, which then can be used as a
log-in at any Web sites supporting OpenID.

Wide adoption of OpenID reduces the frustration of repeatedly having to
register username/password accounts and then later recalling log-in
information for an ever increasing array of Web sites. For on-line
businesses, these efforts can lower password and account management costs,
help reduce the overall risks of security breaches by limiting the amount of
customer personal information businesses need to store and protect, and
increase both new and return user traffic by lowering the barriers to Web
site entry and reentry.

To learn more about the OpenID Foundation, please visit
http://openid.net/foundation.

To learn more about the OpenID, please visit http://openid.net.
 Press Contacts:

Bill Washburn
OpenID Foundation
707-545-4823
bill at oidf.org

Oscar Shine
Google Public Relations
650-253-0216
oshine at google.com

Lon Levitan
IBM Public Relations
512-823-0404
llevitan at us.ibm.com

Brittany Mariotti
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (for Microsoft)
425-638-7075
bmariotti at waggeneredstrom.com

Christina Rohall
VeriSign Public Relations
650-427-5219
crohall at verisign.com

Denis Roy
Yahoo! Public Relations
408-349-2570
denisroy at yahoo-inc.com
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