Yahoo to eliminate Facebook and Google sign-in features to ‘improve the user experience’
Yahoo’s CEO Marrisa Meyer has revealed that the company will phase out the ability to log in to Yahoo and Flickr accounts using Facebook and Google logins, as the company looks to "offer the best personalised experience to everyone".
Instead of being able to use the social services to sign in, users will be told to create a Yahoo ID, with Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick'Em being the first service to require these login details.
“Marisa Mayer and the leadership at Yahoo clearly understand the importance of identity and want to participate in the war to own consumer identity on the web. By shutting out Facebook and Google, Yahoo has declared they'd like to be considered a go to identity provider to consumers,” suggested Patrick Salyer, CEO at Gigya.
Gigya works in the social media login space, with clients such as Pepsico, Nivea and Danone.
“To turn around this trend, Yahoo will need to provide increased value to both consumers and businesses alike. For example, they'll need to consider how identity can be used to power on-site personalisation, social graph integration and maybe even payments one day. Only time will tell if Marisa will take this to the next level to actually become a competitive identity provider, or are just closing off to the benefits that Facebook and Google login might provide for nothing in return."
Use of Facebook and Google logins began in 2010, under then-CEO Carol Bartz.