Yahoo To Open Up Email Authentication

Aditi.Tuteja writes, "Yahoo has announced it will give away the browser-based authentication used in its email service, considered to be the company's 'crown jewels.' Yahoo made the announcement ahead of a 24-hour 'Yahoo Hack Day,' where it had invited more than 500 mostly youthful outside programmers to build new applications using Yahoo services. Considering the different needs of its huge user base (257 million people use Yahoo Mail), Yahoo has decided it can't build or buy enough innovation, so they are enlisting the worldwide developer community." The code will be released late in 2006. Yahoo notes that there are 'no security risks' since they keep absolute control of usernames and passwords.

Comments

jewlery

[macadamia_harold]

Yahoo has announced it will give away the browser-based authentication used in its email service, considered to be the company's 'crown jewels.'

If that's one of their 'crown jewels', would their hosting service be considered the "family jewels"?

Re:OpenID ?

[Frosty Piss]

could they not just conform to a standard?

They do conform to a standard, just not the standard you're talking about.

Re:Crown jewels?

[Psychotria]

I dunno about what you typed. Here in Australia though "crown jewels" means something umm... err.. well I aint giving them away and I'll keep them snug-as-a-bug in my underwear... err, on second thoughts don't read this message

(Obligatory)

[stuuf]

The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from...