[OpenID] Flickr users can now login with a Google account via OpenID

[Eric Sachs]

>> In order to allow existing Flickr users to login with a Google Account,
Flickr would need to support an Account Linking flow. Account Linking can
get really messy ... there are so many edge cases that we decided to defer
this feature until after we could prove that people would actually want to
login to Flickr using a 3rd party account.

Big +1 to that.  I just started a separate thread (copied below) about a
sample site we released today to show what we have learned so far about
account linking.  I hope at IIW we can discuss other tricks & techniques
around the hard edge cases of account linking.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eric Sachs <esachs at google.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 8:47 AM
Subject: Google's sample RP site
To: OpenID List <general at openid.net>


Today Google is releasing a demo site to the OpenID Community that
incorporates everything we have learned about how to become an OpenID
relying party.  The site is at openidsamplestore.com, but we suggest first
reading this FAQ<https://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/Home/openidsamplesite>
which
describes the site and has links to videos of some of the features.

The OpenID community has done a lot of work on usability the last few years,
but primarily focused on the user-experience at the identity provider.
 While we have seen a large growth in OpenID relying-party usage, it is
still primarily used by small to medium sized sites.  Our goal with this
site was to show a set of techniques that a large website could use to
become an OpenID relying party.  Many Googlers will be at the IIW conference
this week where we hope to use this site to drive further discussion about
relying party best practices.

Eric Sachs
Product Manager, Google Security


On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Allen Tom <allentomdude at gmail.com> wrote:

> Because logging in is an extremely high value operation, sites like Yahoo
> are very cautious about making any changes to the login flow, since reducing
> the number of successful logins will have a very negative financial impact.
>
> In order to allow existing Flickr users to login with a Google Account,
> Flickr would need to support an Account Linking flow. Account Linking can
> get really messy, since the onboarding flow would need to ask first time
> users if they already have a Flickr account, and if so, have them go through
> the Yahoo Login flow to link the account (after having already gone through
> the Google OpenID flow). While there are some tricks that can be done to
> optimize the linking flow - for instance, checking to see if any existing
> Flickr accounts already have verified the Google Account's @gmail.comaddress, there are so many edge cases that we decided to defer this feature
> until after we could prove that people would actually want to login to
> Flickr using a 3rd party account.
>
> For sites that don't have large legacy userbases, accepting 3rd party
> logins is a total nobrainer! Logging in with an existing account with rich
> profile data and services is far more valuable than registering a brand new
> local account.
>
> Allen
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Chris Messina <chris.messina at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>  It's not everything that we're hoping for, but I think it's somewhat
>> unreasonable to imagine that any of the large service providers will be
>> ready to just flip the switch and move entirely over to federated login
>> without a more graduated approach to help users ease into that new
>> situation.
>>
>>
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> general mailing list
> general at lists.openid.net
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-general
>
>
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