Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have put aside their feuds and possible partnerships on the online advertising and search markets and have joined forces in an effort designed to promote open identity management on the web. In this context, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google together with IBM and Verisign have become the first corporate board members of the OpenID Foundation. Essentially, the OpenID Foundation is an initiative set up to deliver users with OpenIDs, nothing more than portable Web 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. 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," explained Kim Cameron, chief identity architect, Microsoft.

In the end, the OpenID Foundation will labor to support openness and interoperability among the various presences on the Internet. The initiative comes to benefit not only end users that have the ability to extensively control their sensitive information online, but also businesses, through the availability of a simplified digital identity management system.

Via OpenID's free technology, users can now enjoy a single digital identity across multiple Internet websites. Microsoft revealed that OpenID is delivered as a user-centric digital identity technology, which will make obsolete the practice of having to deal with a variety of different names and passwords.

"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. "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."

"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 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."