The OpenID Foundation (OIDF), formed in early 2006 "to help promote, protect and enable the OpenID technologies and community," yesterday announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined its board.

The Foundation was formed by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community.

While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.

Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had.

In 2008, there will be a larger focus on making OpenID even more accessible to a mainstream audience, the development of a World-wide trademark usage policy (much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla have done), and a larger international focus on working with the OpenID communities in Asia and Europe.

OpenID has grown to be implemented by major open source projects such as Drupal, cornerstone Web 2.0 services such as those by 37signals and Six Apart, as well as a mix of large companies including as Apple, Google, and Yahoo!.