By the end of last year, two big players in the software and internet business have made some interesting steps forward in supporting OpenID.

Yahoo! Is Testing Simple Registration

In November Yahoo! started testing the Simple Registration extension (Sreg) with a limited number of Relying Parties. This extension allows sharing of some basic profile information stored at the OpenID Provider.

As far as I know, the tests are not finished yet, though users can already preview the implementation. As you can see from the screenshot below, I used my Yahoo! OpenID to log in to Plaxo. Don’t mind it’s all German, though.

My real name, nickname, email address (I crossed it out), language, and timezone are forwarded to Plaxo. As usual, Yahoo! provides some informative explanations to users, so they are always informed what’s happening. That’s a real advantage of Yahoo!’s entire OpenID implementation.

Microsoft Live ID Is an OpenID

Another news that almost got unnoticed by me, in October Microsoft announced that Live IDs will be OpenIDs. Microsoft will support the OpenID 2.0 standard only.

Currently, you have to create a Live ID test account to see it work. Already established Live IDs don’t work with the demo. So hopefully, the Microsofft’s tests will end soon. I hate creating test accounts.