Microsoft ends Passport push

Microsoft is abandoning one of its most contentious attempts to dominate the internet after rival technology companies banded together in opposition and consumers failed to embrace it.

The world's biggest software company said it would stop trying to persuade websites to use its Passport service, which stores consumers' credit card and other information as they surf from place to place.

The acknowledgment came after Ebay posted a notice on its site on Wednesday, saying it would stop using Passport in January and rely on its own service. Another early backer, Monster Worldwide's job-hunting site, Monster.com, dropped Passport in October. Because it would keep track of credit card numbers and passwords as people moved from website to website, Microsoft had predicted that Passport would smooth the way for widespread use of web services based on a person's identity instead of those linked to information stored on a specific PC.

But Passport attracted the ire of privacy advocates, trade regulators on two continents and technology security experts, who in 2003 found a hole that could have led to massive identity theft.

As for major merchants, they were concerned about letting Microsoft stand between them and their customers. They feared that the company which controlled more than 90 per cent of the world's desktop computers might one day charge a toll on e-commerce transactions.

In the end, Passport may have been doomed by competition. Soon after Microsoft unveiled the service, a consortium of companies, including Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, formed the Liberty Alliance. It issued guidelines for online customer authentication services, which encouraged the development of Passport rivals.

Adam Sohn, marketing director for Microsoft MSN internet services, said the pull-back was driven by Microsoft's decision to focus on building tools that other companies could use to create their own internet programs, instead of offering the programs itself.

The author is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times. This article is published by arrangement with that newspaper