Password and account management is one of the biggest hassles to people using any sort of online service. Nobody likes to keep track of dozens of passwords, but, on the other hand, using one password across several sites opens up the door to all kinds of troubles. This problem isn't exactly new, but, despite several attempts to solve it, it's probably more of a problem now than it was two years ago. Still, there is progress and Google is announcing a greatly simplified way of signing up for a site with just a couple of clicks.

“Thanks to the utilization of new technology, we're now seeing large-scale success in eliminating the need for passwords while increasing the successful registration rate at websites to over 90%. The most visible examples come from Plaxo, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google using a technique the industry calls hybrid onboarding,” Eric Sachs, product manager, Google Security, wrote about the new technology.

Registering for a site usually involved quite a few steps and moving backwards and forwards between several pages on the site and your email account. This is now standard practice on the web, but it can be frustrating and it leads to potential users finishing the registration process only about 50 to 60 percent of the time. There are, however, alternatives, and one of them is using OpenID to provide a unified login across any number of web properties. The login standard has been seeing some adoption, but it has also proven quite unwieldy even for more experienced users.

Google and others have been working on simplifying the process and now it can boast an implementation that greatly reduces the number of steps and the need to create a new account. The simplified process has been dubbed hybrid onboarding and, despite being based on an existing technology, it is a big step forward. Websites like Plaxo and Facebook now support the system that allows users to sign up and log in using their Google or Yahoo credentials.

Users receive an invitation to join the service from either Facebook or Plaxo. Normally, this would mean going through the regular registration process, but, now, they can just register using their Google account by simply clicking on one button and accepting the process, after which they can start using the site. This is great for these two sites, but, in order to make this feature truly useful, it has to gain significant traction, which is why hybrid onboarding is being offered as a standard method available to any website.