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Fast forward another ten years. Do you really think typical websites will still ask people to create usernames and passwords? I predict that the current trend of "offload that crap to Facebook/Google/BrowserID" will continue. Even BrowserID.org makes that assumption.

The question is whether a BrowserID identity is as useful as one of the established identity providers. You start out with a chicken-and-egg problem; websites won't consume BrowserID if users aren't using it, and users won't use it if websites aren't asking for it. What will overcome this Catch-22? Techwise, the dependence on email seems less compelling than Facebook or Google auth.

Maybe BrowserID can rely on mass distrust of Facebook and Google. I'm not sure that's sufficient though - especially with Google.



facebook, i agree, makes sense for an assertion of your public, real-name identity. there will always be sites and situations where i do not want my real name associated with what i do there.

google auth is just one provider of the same identity as browserID-- an email login. so, imo, browserID is a strict improvement, in that it is more seamless than google auth in regular usage (leveraging the browser as the user agent), and works with more providers.




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