Just days after Microsoft announced the adoption of the OpenID standard for Windows Live users, Google also came to the rescue of its users by joining the initiative, although not as openly as Yahoo or Microsoft.

The OpenID proposes a technology that allows users to create one identity that will work for an unlimited number of Web sites, which means we can forget about all those IDs and passwords we often lost track of.

The catch is that Google limited access to an API for an OpenID identity provider, which means users will be able to login to websites by using their Gmail account. However, users from other accounts will not be able to log in to Google sites with OpenID, at least not now.

This decision pushed Google in the mist of criticism from users, who say this is anything but OpenID. Users who want to log in to websites that have adopted the OpenID protocol will need to choose the “Sign in with Google” option, but they’ll have to go through Google to receive permission to log on the website, which suggests this is in fact a new standard that sounds like OpenID but is not quite it.

For now, it looks like Google is not willing to plunge into the OpenID protocol totally, and it will probably wait for a larger adoption to really open up.

However that may be, Google already found new partners in this project: Zoho and Plaxo, and is working on ways to combine the OAuth and OpenID protocol in the future, that will enable users to have a personalized experience when they log in to trusted websites.