Eric Scmidt
Writing at the All Things Digital (ATD) tech blog site, John Paczkowski quotes Google Chairman Eric Schmidt in seeming to support the premise of a non-profit Information Trust Association consortium — creating a new web infrastructure for trust, identity and commerce that isn’t controlled by a single company. Schmidt was speaking in Q&A format at a May 31 event organized by ATD.
In context, Schmidt was discussing the importance of user identity as a web service, because “in the online world you need to know who you are dealing with.” His remarks also came a minute or so after he said he admired some of what Facebook has done. Facebook’s “Facebook Connect” service is used by thousands of websites to provide single-sign-on identity. As quoted by Paczkowski, Schmidt added: “Historically, on the Internet such a fundamental service wouldn’t be owned by a single company. I think the industry would benefit from an alternative to that . . . . “
Paczkowski’s post is HERE. Schmidt was at the D9 Conference at Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. There are video exerpts, but the part quoted by Packowski of the Schmidt interview by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher didn’t make the edit for the video archive.
