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Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

Ouch.

> Also there seems to be a kind of relationship between Google and Yubico that I would love to know more about.

I've gotten this impression too, though looking back, it may be because Google suggests you Google for U2F, and every time I search for U2F I see Yubico. Anyone know more about this?

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Yes, the U2F spec was developed by Google and Yubico, founding members of the FIDO Alliance. Google seems happy to have more companies on board—their Advanced Protection Program, which requires getting two security keys, suggests buying a Feitian device (which supports U2F as well as Google Smart Lock on iOS via a non-U2F Bluetooth protocol) and a Yubico one.

The real reason is Google buys YubiKeys enmasse from them for employee use (every employee has one), and works with them closely on in various ways.

In fact, they were closely involved when developing the USB Type-C variant.

Can you elaborate more on that? To my knowledge, it was the Intel, TI, Tyco, STM quadriga who was responsible for the nearly complete standard of USB Type-C, with software/consumer industry being given "eat or die" choice, with Apple's engineers apparently actually trying to stall the standard release.

If you meant to reply to my comment, Google is perhaps the largest deployer of Yubico products, and that is where their collaboration holds the most weight.

If there is a security issue with YubiKeys, it puts Google's corporate systems at risk.

I was asking about Usb type c. To my knowledge, Apple, MS, and Google were there just to give blessings on RFCs

I think he tried to say that Google was heavily involved with the development of the USB-C variant of the Ubikey (for example, for use with MacBook pros) rather than with the USB-C standard itself.

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