Microsoft reportedly to stop marketing Passport service - Computer Software - Electronic commerce - Software - Internet - General

Microsoft reportedly to stop marketing Passport service - Computer Software - Electronic commerce - Software - Internet - General: "The newspaper said the software giant had confirmed the step down after one of the service's biggest backers, eBay Inc., said Wednesday it would stop using Passport next month in favor of its own product. It said few customers had taken up the Microsoft service.
Passport keeps track of online consumers' credit card and password information as they move from site to site. It has drawn the ire of privacy advocates, industry regulators and technology security experts, who in 2003 found a security glitch that could have led to massive identity theft, the paper said.
Passport was seen as potentially putting Microsoft at the center of many consumer e-commerce transactions."

An important milestone, if accurate, but in the meantime ~190M Hotmail users have Passport accounts, as do all MSN Messenger and other MSN (dial-up and Premium -- BYOB) users -- Passport may not be promoted for non-Microsoft services in the future, but it's still a huge identity/authentication offering. Microsoft also continues to invest in related areas; most recently, Microsoft consolidated the contacts services shared among Hotmail, MSN, and MSN Messenger, and added new blog (MSN Spaces) features.