People with a Yahoo user name and password will be able to use that ID information to access non-Yahoo Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework, reducing the amount of different logon information people need to create, remember and enter online.

Already, almost 10,000 Web sites support OpenID, an open framework available for free to users and Web-site operators alike, according to the OpenID Foundation.

Yahoo's move will triple the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million by adding its 248 million active registered users to the rolls, the company said Thursday.

OpenID addresses one of several issues related to giving people more control of their online activities. Other groups are focusing on data portability, to let people move around the data and content they create online, so that they don't have to enter it manually in, say, every social-networking site they sign up for.

Yet other initiatives, like Google's OpenSocial, aim to create standard interfaces so that developers can create applications that run in multiple social-networking sites, instead of having to rewrite the same application multiple times for every site.

For all of these initiatives, it's critical for major Internet players to get involved, so that the benefits of standard technology and methods developed by groups like OpenID can have a real-world impact.

Unsurprisingly, in Thursday's statement, Scott Kveton, the OpenID Foundation's chairman, hailed Yahoo's support as a crucial validation of the framework that will help spur its adoption by other large Web site operators.

Other major players that have expressed interest and gotten involved in varying degrees with OpenID include Google, Six Apart, AOL, Sun, Novell and Microsoft.

Yahoo's announcement doesn't come as a complete surprise, because signs that it had been working on an OpenID implementation had surfaced. For example, a short message in the domain me.yahoo.com indicating the company would act as an identity provider for OpenID was spotted last week.

Yahoo participated in the development of Version 2.0 of the OpenID framework, which the company said provides new security features. Yahoo users who log in to third-party OpenID sites should know that the logon process doesn't reveal e-mail or instant-message addresses, Yahoo said Thursday.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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