Why don't Microsoft's own sites support CardSpace?
This is a question I am hearing with increasing frequency as I talk to people about why, how and when they might support information cards. Essentially, it comes down to three reasons:
-
History
-
Perceptions
-
Timing
Alas, some of Microsoft's prior forays into the world of online identity (e.g. Passport, Hailstorm, Wallet, etc) are encumbered (rightly or wrongly) with negative perception issues.
Whilst LiveID (formerly Passport) is an enormously successful online authentication engine that performs in excess of a billion authentications each and every day (and yes, that's not a typo - more than a billion a day!), the world made it clear that it doesn't want ONE authentication authority - it wants MANY. Why? Essentially, it comes down to trust.
If you had to store all your identity information in one place, who would you trust with that data? Microsoft? Google? Your bank? Your Government? There is no clear answer here.
It's this one core issue that has led to the creation of identity selectors such as Windows CardSpace and the Identity Metasystem (IDMS) which permits identities federated across a number of identity providers to be managed and exchanged under the user's explicit control.
One of the decisions we made early in 2006 was to NOT have LiveID support CardSpace at the outset! We did this deliberately to allow us to clearly demonstrate that CardSpace and LiveID were separate but complementary - just as CardSpace and your bank or CardSpace and your government, etc., are. We wanted to ensure that people could examine and explore CardSpace unencumbered by any negative (and incorrect) preconceptions.
However, this is not to say that we've been sitting idly by. Of course, we knew that once it was clearly established that CardSpace is in no way related to or reliant upon LiveID, the next inevitable question would be "so, when are Microsoft's sites going to support CardSpace?"
Both Kim and yours truly pointed out some time ago, LiveID will (in the future) support Information Cards. In fact, we've spent the last several months working closely with our friends over in the LiveID team to support them in building support for information cards into LiveID. When they're done with their implementation and ready to announce, you'll read it here or on Kim's blog within seconds of sign-off! :)
