14 DAY TRIAL // While most tech-savvy folks would find it hard to believe, there are still plenty of people who don't have a Google account. Signing up for a new account on the web can be quite a hassle though, so Google is now making it easier for Yahoo users to create a Google account.
"How many times have you created a new account at a website and seen a message that said: 'Thank you for creating an account. To activate your new account, please access your email and click the verification URL provided'," Eric Sachs, Senior Product Manager, Google Security asks.
"Even though you just want to start using the website, this lengthy process requires you to manually perform a whole bunch of steps," he says.
"To make this process simpler, we’re now using an Internet standard called OpenID which is supported by several email providers, including Yahoo!," he announced.
The scenario described by Google is all too familiar to web users and it's also the norm for the company. Signing up for a Google account requires a valid email.
This could be provided by Gmail, but if you choose to skip on creating a Gmail account, for example, if you're satisfied with your current email provider and just want to access a Google product, you will have to provide a third-party email address.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more email users than Gmail, so here are certainly a lot of people covered by the announcement.
Now, after creating a Google account using a Yahoo email, users will have the option of verifying the email address by simply logging into Yahoo.
Google relies on OpenID and OAuth for the verification process, wich both Google and Yahoo support. For now, the feature is limited to Yahoo, but Google says it will expand it to other sites using OpenID and Microsoft seems the next obvious target.