Google profiles now work with OpenID

GOOGLE PROFILES can now we used as OpenID identifiers, according to a Twitter announcement from the OpenID standard's creator.

"Google Profiles are now OpenIDs. Also, gmail webfinger declares that now too" tweeted Google's Brad Fitzpatrick, making us wish that he had used up a few more of those 140 characters. The announcement means that anyone with a Google profile can request an OpenID sign-on by accessing the Google appspot website and getting their own OpenID url.

Earlier the process was a bit more involved and involved users visiting a couple of sites and a third-party, according to some text accompanying a photo of the new sign-in process on photo sharing site Flickr.

The announcement was welcomed at developer site WebMonkey, where Michael Calore wrote, "These profiles are advantageous over proprietary social networking profiles because of their high visibility in Google, the depth they allow, and because they function as a social hub - most people use them to point to their social presences on other sites."

We can't be exactly sure what Fitzpatrick means with the Webfinger comment, but Webfinger is a way of identifying users by their email address, an addition to the tweet that suggests that Google is committed to OpenID as much as it is to its own ways of identifying people. µ