Soon after Yahoo announced its support of the OpenID single sign-on identity system, some of the biggest names in the industry—Microsoft, IBM, Google, and VeriSign, and Yahoo—have joined the board of the organization behind the standard, according to the OpenID Foundation.

The goal of the Foundation is to establish an open-source technology that makes it easier for people to sign in to the ever-growing number of web sites and web applications, such as social networking sites, without risking identity theft and without needing to separately register for each. Another way to think of it is as a "portable identity." Today's additions to the board are likely to cement OpenID as the standard in this area.