OpenID is not a trust system. But... Google kinda is.

[Martin Atkins]

Brad Fitzpatrick wrote:
> OpenID consumers validate somebody owns a URL, right?
> 
> But how can LiveJournal trust that person isn't a spammer who set up his
> own identity server just for spamming?  OpenID doesn't attempt to solve
> this.
> 
> We keep talking about a hypothetical trust system build atop OpenID, FOAF,
> XFN, etc.  I'm sure somebody will build it.
> 
> But in the meantime, it already exists, and its name is Google PageRank.
> 
[snip]
> 
> So it's possible, and easy.  We just need Google to bless it and say
> bloggers can use it for anti-comment-spam measures.
> 
> Any Googlers want to pass this request along?
> 

Hmm. From my (admittedly limited) understanding of PageRank, you have no 
PageRank at all unless someone links to you. This could make it quite 
hard for a new blogger to actually get anywhere. It's not too hard to 
get on Google, though, I admit. LiveJournal users already all link to 
each other...

One thought that springs to mind is that if people are going to start 
linking to these identity URLs there'll be a lot of OpenID PageRank 
incest. I guess that's what that wacky rel="..." value I forget is for, 
though.