The Next Stage in the Digital “Identity Wars.”

I’ve been following what is been called the “Identity Wars” for a long time. Here is a post of mine from a few years back on this exact topic. In essence it’s the same space it was then, with Google and Facebook being the prime owners of the “digital you” and Twitter, Amazon and Microsoft trying to move up. But at least one more major player is about to join in.

This article from a while ago, I think still accurately grasps the next stage in this battle, where Apple with Touch ID will grow that into a serious offering for logins across the digital space…websites, apps, even as Apple Pay tries to do the same in the physical payment world.

I keep wishing for a serious, distributed, secure authentication/identity system that no one company owns, and that puts the user in charge of their own Identity directly.

But with the death of both OpenID and then later with Mozilla giving up on BrowserID/Persona, I don’t even see a faint hope of one. Am I missing something?