Making auth easier: OAuth 2.0 for Google APIs

One of the most exciting things about the architecture of the web is how easily it supports mashups—URLs, IFRAMEs, XHR, and more make it easy to build great new services on top of building blocks from others. As more and more people use the web for non-public data, we need new techniques to secure those building blocks. That’s where OAuth comes in—an open, standard way for users to grant permission for an application to access part of their account.

Since we announced support for OAuth in 2008, we've seen tremendous usage growth in our APIs that require user authorization, like Calendar and Docs. While the spec isn't completely finalized, Google is pleased to announce our experimental support of an easier way for developers to obtain user authorization for our APIs: OAuth 2.0 with bearer tokens. Whether you use our updated client libraries or just write to the protocol, you should be able to do more with less code.

In addition to supporting a simplified protocol, we're also introducing a simpler, cleaner consent page for OAuth 2.0:


Google believes in open systems that give users value, transparency and control. We hope the OAuth 2.0 protocol helps developers deliver just that: powerful applications that make use of user data without compromising on safety or security. Check out our documentation to get started with OAuth 2.0.

By Andrew Wansley, Google Developer Team