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Everyone else? Hardly. Facebook doesn't implement it. Twitter doesn't implement it. MSN doesn't. Pretty much all forums out there require you to "verify" that you're older than 13 to post. Google is hardly the only site to judge the consent mechanism exception to be too burdensome and unprofitable to implement.

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OK, to be more specific: everybody else has implemented some way for kids under 13 to use their service. That Google does this with the same heavyhanded approach they use for everything else having to do with meatspace is just ... hell, I don't know. Lazy? Short-sighted? Klutzy? Ridiculous?

Microsoft's Live ID absolutely supports this when signing up for, among other things, Hotmail accounts, Messenger accounts, etc. It follows the same basic process as Yahoo, including the $0.50 charge that's partially donated to charity.

Microsoft's implementation has the fun feature that all mail to the "kid" needs to be approved by he parent. Very fun if a college student puts in the wrong age which triggers those notices to go to the admin account for he college. You need to call customer support to fix this. This was not a fun call.

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