The OpenID Foundation announced on Thursday that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo were onboard for the single sign-on identity system, becoming the first corporate members up until this point. Other members include executive director Bill Washburn, Scott Kveton from Vidoop, David Recordon from Six Apart, Dick Hardt from Sxip Identity, Martin Atkins from Independent, Artur Bergman from Wikia, Johannes Ernst from NetMesh and Drummond Reed from Parity Communications.

The OpenID proposes a technology that allows users to create one identity that will work for an unlimited number of Web sites, which means we can forget about all those IDs and passwords we often lost track of. The idea sounds good, but there is still a long way to go before it can be fully implemented, as the OpenID Foundation has managed so far to convince just a small fraction of the Web sites.

The foundation however is looking forward to this year to co-opt new board members: “In 2008, we can expect to see a larger focus on making OpenID even more accessible to a mainstream audience, the development of a worldwide trademark usage policy (much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla have done), and a larger international focus on working with the OpenID communities in Asia and Europe,” an official statement said.

Up until this point, there are over 10,000 Web sites that support the OpenID system, but singing in names like Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign or Yahoo is a big step forward. Official statements by the companies share the excitement to be part of the project:

“Google shares the OpenID Foundation’s vision of a Web that’s easy to use and built on open standards available to everyone,” Founder Brad Fitzpatrick said.

“This effort is intended to provide users with more control and to help them better manage and protect their digital identities,” said Anthony Nadalin, IBM engineer and chief security architect for Tivoli software.

"Yahoo's commitment to an open web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement and Yahoo!'s adoption of the standard today immediately triples the total number of people able to use OpenID," said Scott Kveton, chairman of the Board of Directors of the OpenID Foundation, in a statement.