Microsoft Corp. is still examining the Liberty Alliance Project, an Internet user authentication system, and has yet to reach a decision on whether to join the growing number of companies supporting the system, the company's president said Thursday.

Microsoft Corp. is still examining the Liberty Alliance Project, an Internet user authentication system, and has yet to reach a decision on whether to join the growing number of companies supporting the system, the company's president said Thursday. The Liberty Alliance Project was announced in late September and has as its goal the creation of a ubiquitous, single log-in and decentralized authentication system for online services, accessible from any device connected to the Internet. Led by Sun Microsystems Inc., the group includes America Online Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., eBay Inc., Nokia Corp., NTT DoCoMo Inc., RealNetworks Inc., RSA Security Inc., Sony Corp., Verisign Inc., Vodafone Group PLC. and other companies. Microsoft's began pushing its own Passport system in late 1998 and recently announced plans to support Kerberos security in the system in the hopes of gaining wider support for the service from other retailers and Web site operators. Like Liberty Alliance, it also allows users to authenticate themselves once and then visit a network of Web sites without the need to log in again.