The idea is that instead of signing in with your Yahoo ID, and then clicking off to your Yahoo mail to click on a verification link, a button just takes you to a sign-in page on Yahoo, which verifies your account to Google, and then sends you back. It is a much more civilized way to sign into a site using an existing ID. Google first combined OpenID and OAuth back in January, 2009 with Plaxo on a test basis.
It is trying this method out with Yahoo first, and hopes to expand it to other OpenID partners such as Microsoft. The one-click method results in more people completing the sign-up process. If you don’t already have a Google ID, chances are you have a Yahoo or Microsoft one, so targeting users from those two makes sense. (Both Yahoo Mail and Hotmail still have more users than Gmail).
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Authors: Erick Schonfeld