OpenID timeline 2005–2026: from login URL to EU wallet

This is the master timeline for the history section. Entries marked with a page link have a longer article. Years are given in every line, because several things that look simultaneous in hindsight happened months or years apart. The 2007 to 2009 entries rely on the archived pages of the original openideurope.eu site and on later reference works. The site you are reading is an independent guide and has no connection to the OpenID Foundation or to the former OpenID Europe Foundation.

2005 to 2006: a protocol from the blogging world

• May 2005: a developer at Six Apart creates the first OpenID protocol for LiveJournal, so that blog commenters can prove who they are without a new account.
• October 2005: the Yadis discovery protocol is announced after talks with another identity project. XRI and i-name developers join soon after.
• 2006: simple profile sharing (the Simple Registration extension) is added, work on XRI support begins, and a major identity vendor starts merging its own exchange protocol into the OpenID effort. By mid-2006 the community speaks of an “OpenID 2.0” framework.

2007: foundations, big names and version 2.0

• 31 January 2007: the security company Symantec announces OpenID support.
• 6 February 2007: Microsoft, JanRain, Sxip and VeriSign announce cooperation between OpenID and Windows CardSpace.
• February 2007: AOL announces an experimental provider for its accounts.
• May 2007: Sun Microsystems joins in and pledges not to assert its patents against OpenID implementations.
• June 2007: the OpenID Foundation is formed as a US non-profit. In the same month a separate Belgian association, the OpenID Europe Foundation, is announced; see What was the OpenID Europe Foundation?.
• November 2007: the old European site goes online with a blog; its bylaws are recorded on 15 November.
• 5 December 2007: OpenID Authentication 2.0 and Attribute Exchange 1.0 are ratified, reported in December 2007: OpenID Authentication 2.0 is approved.
• December 2007: Conference visits in Paris and Sweden; see OpenID on tour.

2008: the high point

• 17 January 2008: Yahoo announces OpenID 2.0 support; a public beta of its provider follows in the weeks after. See 2008: Yahoo becomes an OpenID provider.
• 7 February 2008: Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo join the OpenID Foundation as its first corporate board members, covered in February 2008: Google, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo join.
• March 2008: the US trademark is assigned to the OpenID Foundation; see The OpenID trademark and logo. A Swiss provider starts up and a Romanian government programme proposes OpenID for public online services.
• Early May 2008: SourceForge starts accepting OpenID logins, see 2008: SourceForge accepts OpenID logins.
• June 2008: the Swiss national chapter is registered; Zurich hosts a Java conference talk on OpenID.
• July 2008: MySpace announces OpenID support (story); Telecom Italia’s Alice and Virgilio brands follow (story). Facebook previews Facebook Connect at its developer conference.
• 28 to 30 October 2008: Microsoft previews an OpenID provider for Windows Live ID and Google announces limited OpenID provider support (story).
• December 2008: Facebook Connect becomes generally available, the start of the story told in Facebook Connect vs OpenID.

2009 to 2013: social login wins

• February 2009: Facebook joins the OpenID Foundation, according to reference sources, while continuing to promote its own login.
• June 2009: the old European site announces a new country representative for Belgium, among its last posts.
• 2010: the openideurope.eu domain shows a generic parking page by November.
• October 2012: OAuth 2.0 is published as RFC 6749 and becomes the base for later login protocols.
• September 2013: the OpenID provider MyOpenID announces its closure, which takes effect on 1 February 2014.

2014 to 2018: Connect arrives, OpenID 2.0 fades

• February 2014: OpenID Connect is published as a layer on OAuth 2.0. See From OpenID to OpenID Connect.
• July 2014: the EU regulation on electronic identification (eIDAS) is adopted, applying from 1 July 2016.
• 2015 and later: major providers wind down OpenID 2.0, for example Google moving its sign-in to OpenID Connect.
• March and May 2018: Stack Overflow and Blogger end OpenID support, citing low usage.

2019 to 2026: passwordless and the wallet

• March 2019: WebAuthn becomes a W3C Recommendation, forming the web half of FIDO2. See FIDO2 and WebAuthn explained.
• May 2022: Apple, Google and Microsoft announce plans to support passkeys more broadly. Our guide is Passkeys explained.
• 20 May 2024: the revised eIDAS regulation (EU 2024/1183) enters into force and requires every member state to offer an EU Digital Identity Wallet.
• 9 July 2025: the OpenID Foundation publishes OpenID for Verifiable Presentations 1.0 as a final specification (OpenID4VP).
• 16 September 2025: OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance 1.0 follows (OpenID4VCI).
• Around 24 December 2026: the legal deadline for member states to make at least one wallet available. Current status per country is in the EUDI Wallet rollout timeline.

A note on sources

For 2005 to 2008 we rely on the old history page of the original website, on its blog posts and on reference works; where they differ we say so. For 2012 to 2025 the dates come from published specifications and EU legal acts. Where we could not verify a date, it is not in the list.

Reading the timeline

Three things stand out. First, the 2008 peak was real but partly a numbers story: press releases counted accounts at providers rather than people who had ever used OpenID to sign in. Second, usability and the pull of large platforms mattered more than technical elegance, a point developed in Why OpenID 2.0 faded. Third, the underlying idea, that you prove who you are to a site through a party you trust, never went away. It now sits in single sign-on, passkeys and the EU Digital Identity Wallet. The long road is traced in From OpenID to the EU wallet. The global standards are published at openid.net.