[Shorel]

Provide a service similar to Active Directory? Absolutely, that's what is needed from Apple, Red Hat, Canonical, etc.

Depend in any way on a Google Account for anything critical? That's something I oppose with all my will.

[onphonenow]

In a business context a google account requirement would be fine. Microsoft is basically going there to get folks to move AD into the Azure cloud. We're feeling a ton of a pressure towards that, and entitlements for Office etc are being delivered that way (so you end up with a mini AD instance in cloud already).