Every boy and his dog has embraced OpenID, at least among the larger web properties.  Even Microsoft is going to play ball, so the standard is going to be a big part of the day-to-day nuts and bolts of Cloud Computing.  Meanwhile, there are 300,000 accounts on Amazon Web Services and more Internet traffic to the Web Services than to Amazon’s retail side.  It’s about high time Amazon was announcing an OpenID service as part of their offering.  How about it, Amazon?

This is one of those litmus tests for where Amazon is really going.  Their mainstream business doesn’t need or probably want OpenID.  It’s an E-Commerce business that has a well-developed identity service already.  Yet a lot of the rest of the world is embracing OpenID.  A good identity service is a major component that would add a lot of value to the Amazon Ecosystem and be one less undifferentiated thing for developers to worry about building.  Can Amazon develop and bring to market a component of Amazon Web Services that has no use to their mainstream business?  I would love to see them do that to prove the point that AWS is not just a remaindering service or fifth wheel.

What about it, Amazon?