
Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties - alook
http://recode.net/2014/03/04/yahoo-to-end-facebook-google-sign-in-on-its-web-properties/
======
kirillzubovsky
It's alright, Yahoo audience probably haven't heard of Facebook yet anyway.
</sarcasm>

In all seriousness though, this is a good thing. FB login has become so
prevalent, that not having it hurts more than it helps. At the same time, they
used to change APIs so often, that keeping it working was a royal pain.

Although it's much easier to implement these days, especially with services
like [http://hull.io](http://hull.io), it's yet another part of one's site/app
to worry about.

Good for Yahoo!

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null_ptr
Good! The less that people see Google and Facebook accounts as _" Global
Internet Identity Accounts"_, the better.

~~~
wise_young_man
I disagree. The more people use Social login and the less people use their one
shared password on all sites which tends to be "password1", the better.

~~~
nitrogen
The user's single identity should be owned by the user and managed securely by
the browser, not by Facebook or Google.

~~~
derefr
Why do you think users want to own their identities?

Users, when you ask them, want a service that handles the backup and
synchronization of their identity between all their devices. Users don't want
losing the device their keys are on to mean losing their identity. Users want
to be able to join a new device to their identity by just entering their
username and password on it. Users want to be able to enter those credentials
on random public computers to be able to temporarily use their identity on
those computers, then log out when done. And users don't care about the
security implication of any of this.

Currently, given this set of use-cases, "identity providers" like Facebook and
Google work perfectly for users. Password managers don't.

~~~
nitrogen
I didn't say that any existing technology would meet this need, but there
_ought_ to be a way for users to have convenience _and_ privacy. There are
ways of syncing data without revealing it to the data host (Firefox sync,
Tarsnap, BT Sync, possibly AeroFS).

It's up to those of us who actually care about such things to give users what
they want in a way that gives us what we want.

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camus2
> Still, I imagine the grand plan is to make Yahoo “cool enough” that people
> will actually want to use a Yahoo ID consistently. We’ll see how that one
> goes.

For what? as a consumer,what service Yahoo does offer that would make me want
to get a yahoo id?

As a developper ,Yahoo has a few interesting services but that's it. Yahoo's
shopping spree is over but it did not make it more relevant.

~~~
specialp
Yahoo runs many services that have traffic that most start-ups here would die
for. Number one finance site,number one news site, huge fantasy sports,
Flickr, Delicious, significant search traffic. People on HN tend to dismiss
them but we are indeed talking one of the most trafficked websites on Earth. I
would say there is more value having a Yahoo ID than most other sites due to
how much they offer.

~~~
kevincrane
It's not popular but I think Yahoo Mail is way better than a lot of people
give it credit for as well.

~~~
mattmanser
A brief bit of googling shows Yahoo mail has similar numbers of users as
Hotmail and Gmail, somewhere between 200-400 millionish, hard numbers aren't
often announced.

So it's popular, though has lost it's top spot.

~~~
kevincrane
Oh right, I guess meant "not trendy". I know it's pretty widely-used, but it
unfortunately and unfairly tends to elicit the same response as when someone
tells you they use AOL for their internet.

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bencoder
I tried to sign up recently with yahoo to access a yahoo group and they
demanded a phone number which I didn't want to give them, so I gave up.

~~~
mertd
(123) 456 7890 wouldn't work?

~~~
bencoder
no, it required a confirmation text/phone call

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Fuxy
Who in their right mind would use their FB login on other websites anyway.

I personally tend to avoid it like the plague.

Every time you use it you grant another website access to your Facebook
profile data.

I don't think i want to share that.

Now i know there's some security there but honestly I don't thrust it Facebook
is leaky enough as it is I would rather not push my luck by giving permissions
to unnecessary things.

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saltysugar
My flickr account is created with Google login. I wonder whether they'll force
me into singing up for Flickr cause it's the service with most storage for
photos out there (albeit the lack of desktop sync).

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lnanek2
I can't remember my Yahoo login, I may have had one a decade ago. I don't
really buy their excuse that removing social login helps in any way. As a
developer, with social login, I have a username to link everything to just as
much as normal server login. You can still have user records in your DB keyed
on that, a settings page on your site that stores settings against that user,
whatever you need. So how does removing social login improve personalization?
I don't think it does. Just sounds like an excuse.

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blueskin_
I wonder how many of the 10 remaining Yahoo users will be inconvenienced by
this.

Seriously though, this is a good thing - third party sign in is a horrible
idea and should die.

~~~
ampersandy
Why is it a horrible idea? I worked on the Site Integrity team at Facebook and
I can assure you that protecting people's accounts from attackers is a
fundamentally hard problem that very few companies are actually equipped to
handle.

~~~
tobiasu
Ah yes, the good samaritians over at facefuck, providing a service for free.
(Leave it to us, you're too stupid to handle this...)

Your disgusting business motives and my (consumer) interests do not align, at
all.

~~~
Robin_Message
That's pretty uncalled for. If you met a Facebook developer in person would
you talk to them like that?

Facebook provides a service people find genuinely useful, or they probably
wouldn't keep using it.

Their business motives don't seem much different from other large businesses,
and their impact on consumer interests seem minimal (e.g. compare them to
Target's accidental pregnancy revelations – which is worse?)

The are pushing society in new and interesting directions on privacy, but I
don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, nor is it their fault (e.g. the
invention of personal cars changed society a lot, positively and negatively,
but no-one blames car companies.)

On the substantive point, when you see the number of credential leaks and
account hijackings out there, maybe telling most developers "You're too busy
and inexperienced to handle this well; we have many well paid experts working
on this" is a good thing.

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roberjo
Are we going to move back toward more 'walled-garden eco-systems' to protect
the brand and improve internal lock-in of customer cash? Le Sigh.

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fourstar
I look forward to this being a trend that continues.

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stefan_kendall3
Unless I really, really, really want to use a service, I only use it if I can
login with gmail or facebook.

I don't have time for your shit registration form or strange password
requirements. I'm always logged into gmail and facebook, so those are always
one-click accounts for me.

I understand wanting to become the identity provider, but the ship has sailed
here.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Do you do your web browsing always logged into gmail and facebook? No
criticism intended.

I use Chrome for accessing gmail, facebook, twitter, and linkedin - always
logged in. For everything else I use Firefox with strong privacy settings. No
overhead for me to do this, and this seems like a reasonable middle-road for
privacy.

~~~
stefan_kendall3
Yup, I do. I maintain pretty strict control of my physical security of the
laptop. If anyone gets access to my physical goods, I have much bigger
problems.

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cordite
I WAS going to post that the only reason why I'd probably post a comment on
this article was because the web is meant to be integrated.

But it seems they wanted me to sign up for an account first on recode. _sigh_

I thought LiveFyre was going to handle that. Hitting back also meant I lost my
message.

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Donzo
If you want to use Yahoo services, you're going to need to have a hacked email
account.

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mydogmuppet
I have never been able to sigh into Flickr with anything other than by
Facebook ID. All attempts by me/Yahoo to create an Yahoo ID that wasn't locked
in some self defeating loop failed.

I've never been a fan of Yahoo or for that matter Hotmail; they force an ID on
you which is then hijacked by their email servers to spam all your
contacts...again...and again.

Why can't Yahoo just die gracefully ? Why do they have to inflict their death
throes on Flickr Users ?

