Amazon is following in the footsteps of Google, Twitter and Facebook and allowing you to use them to easily and quickly log-in to third-party apps, games and websites through OAuth. How you feel about that will probably depend on whether you value convenience over handing even more data about yourself over to a mega-corporation.
Amazon’s new service is called “Login With Amazon.” Straightforward enough, and you can guess how it works: just like the Login with Twitter, Facebook and Google options you’re already probably using.
Developers can use the service for free to make logging in convenient for their users, and the service is already live on Amazon-owned sites Zappos and Woot.
A good thing? It depends on your point of view. For guys like me, who have already given up on the concept of true Internet privacy, I’m fine with using a login service like Amazon’s for convenience’s sake. Then again, it’s not like I really need another login option, is it? The competition already has me pretty well covered.
Question for you readers: is this something you think Apple would ever do? “Login Through iTunes?” Right now, Apple doesn’t seem to monetize data it collects on users, which actually makes them one of the good guys on the Internet, as far as privacy is concerned. But would you use a universal Apple login? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Amazon
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
One response to “Amazon Launches Universal Login Service, But Will Apple Counter With “Login With iTunes?””
They could have done this ages ago. Add to this Cooks comments last night about Apple not needing a social network and it looks like a big no. Particularly since your banking is likely attached and Apple is rather careful with that info. They have had enough issues with folks engineering into accounts already they don’t need someone using their Apple ID, clearly marked as such, on a site and pissing someone off.