This is indeed exciting news for OpenID advocates, and for proponents of the so-called "Open Stack". I wrote up my thoughts on a number of the commenters' points on my blog (thanks for the link), but I can provide some more specific thoughts (I don't work for Google, FYI). @Tim: This is something being considered and worked on, and Facebook Connect is certainly an inspiration for a seamless experience here. That said, making it *too* seamless and smoothing out the OpenID speedbump might make people gloss over the importance of deciding whether to grant federated account access. This isn't something as simple as agreeing to a EULA in desktop software where the transaction is constrained to your desktop; instead, when you give access to someone on a remote server, it's hard to take it back. Usability work will certainly help here, but I'd caution against making the flow too transparent. @Craig: Totally. I think there simply needs to be continued advocacy for the majors to become OpenID relying parties. It's - Chris Messina from FriendFeed MT Plugin