[Duff]

I'm surprised that 37signal's thought process is so utterly flawed. Blaming a technology for implementation problems just doesn't make sense. Using this logic, we would have concluded in 1997 that since Geocities pages were ugly and slow, HTTP was a waste of time.

StackOverflow demonstrates aptly that OpenID is a technology that can work really well. You just need to: - Funnel users to pervasive, competent providers like Google, Facebook, Verisign - Make the integration experience as smooth as possible.

If your implementation of OpenID requires users to enter URLs and encourages users to use random providers, than yes, it sucks.

[brianpan]

Really? Because yesterday I went to Meta StackOverflow and was utterly confused why I was getting new openid requests. (It was because MetaSO is different that SO.) Then I went to SO and was still confused because I thought I used yahoo but actually used google. Then, after I logged in with yahoo, I tried to change from google to yahoo and ended up with both, and now I can't remove the google openid. Very confusing.

Instead of managing 1 SO and 1 MetaSO login, I'm managing a connection from SO to one of many providers and MetaSO to one of many providers. Best case, that's 3 pages (SO, MetaSO and Yahoo) to manage logins to 2 sites.