Microsoft, Google, Verisign, Yahoo! and IBM Join OpenID's Board

Now we're talking about serious respectability. The OpenID Foundation now has some major new backers, with Microsoft, Google, Verisign, Yahoo! and IBM all joining the Foundation as its first corporate board members.

As more and more sites and companies sign up to support OpenID, the addition of corporate members shouldn't come as a real surprise. Additionally both Google and Yahoo! recently announced some manner of OpenID support, and

In a press release, Bill Washburn, Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation said:

"With this support from the new company board members, the OpenID Foundation will be able to continue to promote and protect the technology and its community moving forward. The community has clearly expanded since the inception of the Foundation and these companies will help bring OpenID into the mainstream markets."

That's all well and good, but it ignores the biggest problem still facing OpenID. Everyone wants to be a provider (meaning supplying logins), not a consumer (meaning accepting logins), at least to this point.

After all would Microsoft want people logging in with their Yahoo! ID ... oh, wait, they might. OK, would Microsoft want people logging in with their Google ID?

Without more consumers, this still means we all have to keep track of too many logins. I'd hope these companies, now being on the board, would all move to the consumer side of OpenID (Yahoo! has already said they will).