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Why isn't identity handled by the browser?

15 points by pc2g4d ↗ HN
Every login page is different---or at least used to be until sites started standardizing on Facebook/Google/whatever login. This seems like an obvious place for browsers to provide a standardized user experience, but this never took off, in spite of Mozilla's efforts: https://www.wired.com/2010/04/mozilla-gets-it-right-moves-identity-management-into-firefox/

Why hasn't such standardization happened?

4 comments

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danjoc
Not sure who flagged your question, but it's not even top 300 despite the upvotes. I really hate this site sometimes.
observation
I think because the 'state', isn't.

Think of the number of times your computer has crashed, had memory wiped, new OS installs, been stolen, replaced. Did your bookmarks from 15 years ago survive?

With mobile phones identity works a little better and likely because of SIM cards.

relaunched
Just one person's opinion, but the average customer doesn't make decisions based-on security or privacy. Nor do they care about participation in a walled garden. So, what's left? Brand affinity.

Browsers may just be a relatively transparent means to an end, especially in the app world. The differences between them are small, to the average consumer, and I'm guessing whatever is solved by moving them to the browser is trumped by the existing state, syndicating the credentials you already have with the companies you trust, saving credentials to the browser and easy to remember (insecure) passwords.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona was great. But, what customer problem are you trying to solve?

romanovcode
> Why hasn't such standardization happened?

Because everyone has their own vision of what should be a "standard".

- That's why you still have browsers that don't render the same way.

- That's why you have 100 JS frameworks that try to push their way of doing things.

- That's why you have 50 CSS pre-processors.

- ...