Firefox Steps Up to Challenge Facebook's Claim to Identity
The team behind Mozilla's Firefox browser announced today the availability of experimental code that website owners can add to their pages to allow site visitors to create an account, log-in or switch users with just a few simple clicks and no password to remember.
The unveiling comes a week after Facebook fired a big shot across the web, staking a claim as the dominant provider of one-click portable identity. These two technologies seem aimed right at each other and engineers at both companies have no doubt been following each others' work closely.
The Mozilla technology is called Account Manager and is intended to become an open specification that any other browser can build on top of as well. Supporting browsers will automatically generate and remember diverse, high-strength passwords for users and allow multiple users to switch easily between accounts when visiting common websites on one computer. The interface mock-ups looks really nice, too.
Account Manager is currently available as an experimental plug-in, primarily for developers to test with, but project leaders say they "are looking to ship this feature as soon as possible in Firefox."
Mozilla's Dan Mills says "the final feature will almost certainly not look like this - it's just to give you an idea." But it certainly does look exciting. A feature like this would make new account creation super fast, it would eliminate the need to remember your passwords and it would make it safer to use web apps. That could be just the beginning, too: identity is more than just a username and password. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to carry all kinds of payload with you (tastes, contact info, etc.) when you navigate the web with your browser.
Hopefully Chrome will institute support for this same code quickly. The browser is a very logical place to transport log-in info. "The browser also has deep knowledge about the user," says Mozilla. "For example, the browser could implement fast user switching with just a click. Or think about picking a username: the browser can look at usernames for other accounts and make some pretty good guesses about what usernames are preferred."
The ability to easily manage multiple identities is big, too. That's something that Facebook doesn't offer, but it's important when it comes to choice, freedom and privacy.
Challenging Facebook
One year ago we wrote that the most viable challenger to Facebook's fast growing domination of the web could be Firefox, not another social network. Firefox had more users at the time (270 million vs Facebook's then 200 million), but Facebook has doubled its user numbers in the last year alone.
Facebook launched a jaw dropping number and scope of new portable identity technologies last week.
Here's what we wrote a year ago about these two companies going head to head.
Why compare user numbers between a browser and a social network? Because there's every reason to believe that the two technologies are converging in the near term future. ...Though we may not be sure about his prediction that Google will act before Firefox, we think Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang offers a very compelling vision of the future of browsers and social networks in his excellent report The Future of the Social Web.
'... in a bid to extend the reach of its new browser, Chrome, we expect Google to build OpenID and its associated friend connections into the browser; look for Firefox and eventually Internet Explorer to copy this feature. Facebook and MySpace will also likely build a way for users to surf the Web within the Facebook experience, retaining the social functionality. These connections won't be perfect, but they'll allow social networks to colonize communities and other parts of the Web, extending their experience out to other sites through the shared ID. As a result, in two years, portable identities will become a ubiquitous part of the online experience as they reach maturity.'
It's only logical to extrapolate from that analysis that the line between browsers and social networks will become much less clear and the two types of software will very likely compete with each other."
Click here to read the rest of our analysis of things changing about Firefox that point towards its importance in the world of online identity.
Who do you want to carry your identity around the web for you? How about a nice open source browser, built on open standards, supporting multiple identities and strong security? That sounds better to me than putting Facebook in charge. Despite all Facebook does for hundreds of millions of people, putting our entire portable identity into one company's hands is just too dangerous. Of course if it's quick and easy browser-level identity you want, don't forget about the "Facebook browser" called RockMelt that Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is backing and that we broke the news about last Summer. Last we heard, that super stealthy company was still hiring.
Let's see some more competition on the browser level! This time with portable data and a world of web applications at the heart of the battle.
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So basically the Firefox team is copying all the features from the 1Password app/browser plugin.
Nice to see the idea spreading across the web though.
So it seems like everyone who's been around for a while on the web gets the idea of not putting all your identity in the hands of a single third party. Those talking like Facebook's move is the best thing ever are primarily marketers and young turks with MBAs.
Agree or disagree?
great article marshall.
one area where facebook fails miserably -- and thus a point of delight for folks like myself who view their "let's takeover the internet" strategy as unpleasant -- is in their insufficient tolerance for multiple identities. by establishing themselves as a private soc net before selling out and making everything public, they established a technology ecosystem and user culture based around singular identity management.
i believe the web will be a place where multiple identities will blossom. IMHO browsers will beat facebook in that regard, at least at the current stage of the game.
MR Gunn, I'd add to that list "hundreds of millions of people who will appreciate the convenience and power of the development"
What was the point of portrating this as something that's adversarial? The FireFox plugin makes use of many different identity providers including Facebook.
David, more and more these days I feel like Facebook and Choice are adversarial. I also love Facebook. I should read your post about F8 being good news for open web developers.
sadsad
One of the things I do is research digital legacy issues (exploring the intersection of death, social media and technology). So, I wonder how much of what Firefox collects will be stored, and where? For instance, if someone passes away, and their loved ones want to access their online accounts to tie up their affairs, will the Firefox Account Manager plugin facilitate that in any way? Will it hinder it? And, what about privacy concerns when using a shared computer? So many questions...
Thanks for a great article! I was intrigued by the question "Who do you want to carry your identity around the web for you?" so I created a poll at http://twtpoll.com/w19r6f Please spread the word about the poll so we will get an answer on who people wants to win the portable identity challenge!
The FF tool is indeed a very useful idea, but why not just make OpenId as a login standard? This tool won't work beyond Firefox and I'm already on Chrome. So tomorrow, Chrome will have to come with something matching. Website owners will be clueless on which way to go.
Keeping Identity in browsers is okay if:
- you use one browser / computer all the time
- you are ABSOLUTELY sure that no virus attacks could compromise your identity data in the browser
Unfortunately for savvy users the first condition is increasingly not being met as they hop from their mobile device to their laptop to some other computer (to say the iPad) throughout the day.
For the non-savvy "simpler" users the second condition is not met, which is they are never so sure that their anti-virus is strong enough to protect their computers.
The Facebook/Google single sign-on alternative overcomes this whole problem because
- on every "new" device I move to all I have to do is log in once to my facebook profile
- I dont store my pwd on any PC/browser, its there in my head and I just need to remember ONE password for my facebook account.
Too bad it works just for six sites, I would like to test it on twitter with my 20 accounts :) Can't wait to see the project progrees. A bold move from Mozilla which market is shrinking, this can give them some advantage for some time :)
Who came up with this "it would eliminate the need to remember your passwords and it would make it safer to use web apps" as a positive argument? It certainly sounds appealing to regular users, but the "inconvenience" to remember passwords shapes the web as an ubiquitously accessible platform.
All fair and well for tech savvy people who live in the browser, literally. Multiple devices, multiple browsers, that's easy enough to fix...
But - what about all those folks who don't even know (or care, for that matter) what a "browser" is? They just want to get on the internets, hit up their farmville friends, share a photo or two, drop a tweet and check email? You can find many of them at the "Facebook Login" post from last month.
I agree that the browser or entry-point is the perfect place for the single login, but I also think "that time" has passed. There will NEVER be a widespread single login system because too many corporations, whether they claim to be open source, not evil, or whatever... All think they are the best keepers of the nut, which is identity.
So far... Facebook is doing it best, since it has the people... but there are also many that simply refuse to give up that identity to FB.
It will be the same story, regardless of whom the keeper may be.
With Firefox's incredibly unsecured way of storing passwords on my machine, I would be very uninterested in trusting my online identity to them.
Facebook as my one stop password provider? How many times has that site been hacked to the core?
I am not even using Disqus for my comments because it slows the site down so much.
I myself am always going to leave my comments open to anyone who wants to enter the conversation.
If I will ever use a one stop login it will be Google. I trust that log in for my business and I even store a credit card there.
Not going to trust anything like that to Facebook.
Why would anybody use a browser to keep identities? A browser's main goal has to do with convenience, not security or privacy. There are several secure password safes in the Open-Source universe which are just as convenient to use as one built into a browser.
I hope this feature will be opt-in or I'll have to find another browser to pay my bills online.