Microsoft recently recruited OpenID Foundation co-founder Dick Hardt as a  new partner architect on consumer, enterprise and government identity solutions.

You may remember Hardt from his work on Sxipper, the identity plug-in for FireFox.  Hardt has also co-authored the OpenID 2.0 specification

This could represent a move by Microsoft towards supporting OpenID interoperability within its consumer and enterprise products.  OpenID has been getting more attention lately, especially with the recent announcements from Google regarding its Friend Connect service.

More details at The Register.

Filed under: Consumer Web, Enterprise Web, OpenID