14 DAY TRIAL // The web is evolving at a fast pace, as always, and, at the moment, there are several big trends. One of them is the convergence of online identities and the need to allow various services and apps to work together. One way of enabling two services to securely share information is to implement the OAauth authentication protocol. Google made a very good impression last week when it introduced OAuth support to Gmail, but it now looks like Yahoo beat it to the punch by a few days.
Yahoo Mail had actually quietly introduced the same technology just a few days earlier, on March 25. The implementations vary technically, but, for the end users, it should make little difference. The move will enable developers to access users' email accounts easily and securely without having to require the full account credentials. It also makes it easy for users to manage what apps get access and for how long. With two of the three biggest email services in the world now supporting OAuth, the future is looking very bright for third-party developers.
"Today we're super excited to announce our OAuth API for Yahoo Mail! Not only have we moved to a much cleaner authentication technology, but we have removed all the restrictions limiting message access of ‘free’ accounts. That means that you can now use the full API for all Yahoo Mail users regardless of their free/premium status, accessing full message contents if your application needs it. Cool, eh?," Yahoo announced in a Yahoo Groups posting.
Yahoo Mail is the largest email provider in the world. Yahoo has implemented OAuth access through its existing Yahoo Mail Web Service API. OAuth is slated to become the default, and eventually the only, way for third-party developers to get access to the email service. Google, on the other hand, built the OAuth feature on top of the IMAP/SMTP protocol commonly used by email clients and other apps to access an email server.