Two years after their launch, Google is updating passkeys and expanding its cross-account protection program with other companies that run non-Google apps and services. The search engine giant also announced that since their 2022 launch, passkeys have been used to authenticate users more than one billion times across 400 million accounts.
The announcement comes amidst Google’s increasing efforts to introduce a passwordless future. It further states that users find it easy to log in via passkeys, as they’re as much as 50 per cent faster and more convenient. Users are only required to unlock their devices using their existing biometric or pin logins.
Industry support for passkeys also seems to be on the rise. eBay, Shopify, Uber, PayPal, WhatsApp, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple have started supporting passkeys. Third-party password managers such as 1Password and Dashlane have also introduced passkey support, with the former seeing a 70 per cent increase in conversion with passkeys.
Moving forward, passkeys will be supported as a login method when enrolling in Google’s strongest security offering — the Advanced Protection Program (APP), which safeguards users at the highest risk of targeted attacks, such as journalists, human rights workers, and campaign workers or candidates.
Until now, APP required hardware keys as a second factor, which is what Google aims to replace with passkeys in the future. However, the company hasn’t announced any dates or rollout users for this plan, simply stating that they’ll “soon support” the feature.
As mentioned above, Google’s cross-account protection program is expanding to support more non-Google apps and services. The program allows third parties to privately send account security notifications from Google if a user’s account has been hacked, signed out, suspended, or disabled. 62 apps and services support this, including Adobe, LinkedIn, and OpenAI. No names have been announced, but an announcement should be coming soon.
Google started letting users switch to passkeys on their devices in May 2023. Since then, passkeys have been the most hopeful contender in big tech’s attempt to replace passwords and the issues that come with them. However, considering the web largely still supports passwords across the board, the dream of a passwordless future might have to wait a little longer, or at the very least, co-exist with passwords.
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