I think AppEngine and storage are developer bait. What's notable in the TechCrunch article is bit about authentication via GoogleID. Let's say Google entices

I think AppEngine and storage are developer bait. What's notable in the TechCrunch article is bit about authentication via GoogleID. Let's say Google entices 100K developers to provide applications of some sort which rely on a Google ID for auth. A huge segment of internet users would acquire a Google ID _AND_ recognize that they have one. So, Google becomes a de facto record of the world's identity (much like Facebook?). What sorts of services could be built on top of this? How much is that worth?