The OpenID Train Steams Ahead: Google, IBM and Verisign Said To Be Joining

TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher is reporting that Google, IBM and Verisign are in late stage discussions with the OpenID Foundation. This news comes on the same day that Google, Facebook and Plaxo joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

Google has been testing OpenID with its Blogger platform since late last year, but this is said to be a more general implementation across core Google properties.

OpenID was originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick, previously at LiveJournal and now at Google. It’s likely he’s pushing this internally. If he gets Google on board, then OpenID has very rosy prospects ahead.