I think that was Microsoft Passport. More recently, it's Mozilla Persona. The problem has always been a lack of incentives for websites to implement them, coupled with user indifference.
I would disagree. It's common knowledge (backed by many A/B tests) that shorter sign-up forms see less traffic drop. So, if OAuth can replace a number of things (name, email, password, email verification, and so on) by a couple of clicks, I as a website owner will be very happy. Also, when sending interesting emails to inactive users, I see quite a few come back but drop again after a few unsuccessful login attempts. Again, OAuth will help.
The reasons website owners (at least I) don't use facebook or google's OAuth are following:
1. They brand their service too much. The button itself says Login with Facebook/Google. I don't want my users' mind share to be consumed by them. Everything from login/logout to account management happens on pages in the context of their brand. Browser/OS providing this service is much less problematic, and even they should have pluggable services for replacing their default implementations, just like the ability to change the default browser on any OS.
2. They own the data and not the user. I have faced an incident in the past where one of my games was blocked by facebook because they thought it was gambling. I lost 95% of my users in one stroke. It took me two weeks haggling with FB to get my game whitelisted again. Still, the damage was done and we could never fully recover. The data must be owned by the end user and stored in open format so that user can take it freely from one place to another, just like I can take my contacts in vCard format to wherever I like.
3. Any such solution (especially when so heavily branded) will naturally turn other big players hostile. for example, facebook and google will have their own separate implementations instead of having a common one. This will almost ensure that standardization will hot take place. One button each for signup with Facebok/Google/LinkedIn/OpenID/... doesn't make for great UX and it's unnecessary overhead for website owners.
Mozilla persona is a good initiative. Hope they prefer standardization over trying to use it to promote their own browser.
I would disagree. It's common knowledge (backed by many A/B tests) that shorter sign-up forms see less traffic drop. So, if OAuth can replace a number of things (name, email, password, email verification, and so on) by a couple of clicks, I as a website owner will be very happy. Also, when sending interesting emails to inactive users, I see quite a few come back but drop again after a few unsuccessful login attempts. Again, OAuth will help.
The reasons website owners (at least I) don't use facebook or google's OAuth are following:
1. They brand their service too much. The button itself says Login with Facebook/Google. I don't want my users' mind share to be consumed by them. Everything from login/logout to account management happens on pages in the context of their brand. Browser/OS providing this service is much less problematic, and even they should have pluggable services for replacing their default implementations, just like the ability to change the default browser on any OS.
2. They own the data and not the user. I have faced an incident in the past where one of my games was blocked by facebook because they thought it was gambling. I lost 95% of my users in one stroke. It took me two weeks haggling with FB to get my game whitelisted again. Still, the damage was done and we could never fully recover. The data must be owned by the end user and stored in open format so that user can take it freely from one place to another, just like I can take my contacts in vCard format to wherever I like.
3. Any such solution (especially when so heavily branded) will naturally turn other big players hostile. for example, facebook and google will have their own separate implementations instead of having a common one. This will almost ensure that standardization will hot take place. One button each for signup with Facebok/Google/LinkedIn/OpenID/... doesn't make for great UX and it's unnecessary overhead for website owners.
Mozilla persona is a good initiative. Hope they prefer standardization over trying to use it to promote their own browser.