The Web was not as ubiquitous as today. The demographics
of habitual customers, the main target, were not expected
to overlap much, from the very beginning, with those of
the audience of the website. Web-based campaigns were far
from today??™s maturity in term of tools, demand, structured offerings,
and raw material (read, eyeballs).
In that atmosphere, it should not come as a surprise that somebody
saw authentication just as another ???feature??? of the website,
and as such suitable to be handled by third parties, too.
The Passport offering was very convenient because it relieved
sites from the hassle of managing their own authentication infrastructure,
a very delicate aspect of the website architecture. That
was the intended role of Passport in the purchase of a
Valentine??™s day present; Microsoft was just an infrastructure
provider.
As the Internet became what it is today, many of the conditions
that made authentication outsourcing appealing started to fade.
It became unmistakably clear that the web presence isa strategic
asset, while at the same time online activities became more
complex and feature-rich. The attention and resources devoted
to it by companies increased.
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