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So says Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick in a Twitter post Wednesday.

You can now use the URL of your Google Profile to confirm your identity on any website that supports OpenID. When the site asks you for an OpenID identifier, just plug in the URL of your Google Profile and you’ll be directed to Google, where you confirm the request.

OpenID Foundation board member Chris Messina has posted a screenshot of what the user flow looks like when using your Google Profile URL to log in on a website that supports OpenID:

Brad is one of the creators of OpenID and one of the driving forces behind Google Profiles. Google launched its public profile service, which allows anyone with a Google account to create a public profile on the web that shows up in Google’s search results, earlier this year. At first, Profiles were rather spare, but Google has slowly been enhancing the features of Profiles to include vanity URLs and support for microformats.

These profiles are advantageous over proprietary social networking profiles because of their high visibility in Google, they depth they allow, and because they function as a social hub — most people use them to point to their social presences on other sites. Not to mention that Google Profiles appear on the open web rather than inside of Facebook, where, by default, a profile can only be seen by people you’ve connected with on Facebook.

Webfinger, also referenced in Fitzpatrick’s tweet, is a new protocol Google is building into Gmail. It lets you attach any public identity data to your e-mail address. Learn more about it at the Google Code project site.

See Also:

• Google Profiles and Creating a ‘Social Hub’ on the Open Web
• Google Makes It Easier to Search for ‘Me’
• Google Social Search Adds Your Friends to Your Search Results

Google’s new look? The search giant is testing a revamped results page. Click the image for a larger view.

Google appears to be testing a possible redesign of its iconic search page. Whether or not the new prototype will ever become official remains unknown, but thanks to some clever JavaScript you can check out the new look today.

The Google watchers over at Google Blogoscoped have found a snippet of JavaScript you can paste into your browser’s URL field which will activate the new look. Because the JavaScript code sets a new cookie, you’ll most likely need to log out of your Google account before it works.

Once the cookie is set, refresh the Google homepage and you’ll see the changes. The search buttons have become blue and the overall look is a bit like that of Google Wave. More significant is the redesigned search results page (seen above) which features an always-on sidebar for narrowing search results by type, date and view.

The brighter, more Wave-like look of the prototype doesn’t bother us, but we’re not so sure about the sidebar, especially given that the same options are already available in the infinitely more compact menu that runs along the top of the page.

There is one new search option in the sidebar that you won’t find on the current Google page — the ability to see results from online forum sites.

The good news, should the new look utterly disgust you, is that so far Google hasn’t even mentioned the new look (and had not responded to our inquires when this story was published) let alone taken any steps toward making it official. Given Google’s track record of beta testing, we suspect the redesign will be thoroughly and publicly tested before it goes live, if in fact it ever does.

See Also:

• Google Social Search Adds Your Friends to Your Search Results
• Google Gets Faster, Less Spammy With Revamped Search Engine
• Use Google Experimental Search Features Today

Google is getting ready to offer widespread support for extensions in Chrome, launching a program which will allow third-party developers to add features to its browser.

The company released more details about its new Chrome Extension Gallery Tuesday. Developers can now upload their extensions to the Chrome Extensions Gallery, in effect publishing their extensions even before the browser officially supports them. Support for Chrome extensions is available in the current developer release, but they will probably arrive in the browser for all users before the end of the year.

At the moment, there isn’t much to see in the Chrome gallery — it’s just a form for developers to upload their extensions. However, Google is clearly hoping Chrome will one day support an extension ecosystem similar to the one Mozilla enjoys with its highly successful add-ons community for Firefox. The site will offer the ability to search and browse for extensions, and Google is encouraging developers to upload videos and screenshots explaining what each extension does.

The company has also posted guidelines outlawing things like copyright infringement, hate speech and any extension to “enable the unauthorized download of streaming content or media” — which means we probably won’t see extensions for ripping videos from YouTube.

To that point, Chrome extensions will be reviewed before they become publicly available. The Chrome Blog says that, for most extensions, “the review process is fully automated.” However, if your extension plans to use low-level components or access file:// URIs, Google will require a manual review and may ask developers for additional information before such extensions end up in the gallery.

See Also:

• Google Chrome Closes in on Firefox With Official Extension Support
• Google Chrome Is Growing Up, Slowly but Surely
• Google Chrome Gets Add-ons, Closes in on Firefox