After opening the API for the news feed recently, Facebook announced end of April that they were working on OpenID support for signle-sign-on. Not even four weeks later you can select Google, MySpace, Yahoo, Vidoop, Myopenid and OpenID as linked account options.
You can also connect with these logins later. If you do that e.g. for Gmail, you will be able to access Facebook with out login when coming from your Gmail account.
This is truly what I call a bold step. Most other larger platforms will allow you to use their credentials in an openid way for other sites, but Facebook are the only ones to allow 3rd party credentials and thus spare you the local registration.
This is a big move towards openness but also a big step towards each other between Facebook and Google. Quite surprising to me, given that Google was supposed to work on their own social network and had recently announced friend connect. Maybe finally Google starts to realize that Facebook will be difficult to overrun – even for a Google.
Update:
I also noticed that the Gmail account linking will ask for permission to share the Gmail contacts. Not sure how this impacts friend finder features and to what extend they get automated, but it is truly the more interesting effect “Addressbook control” of the new feature for Facebook and Google compared to the convenience of a single-sign-on.
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Nice to see this move. Makes sense after FB joined the OpenID board.
http://openid.net/2009/02/05/facebook-joins-openid-foundation-board/