Are Passwords Dying? Google’s Big Move to Passkeys

Google really is trying to move away from passwords, and they’re doing it with something called passkeys. The idea is simple, instead of typing a password, you unlock your account the same way you unlock your phone, with your face, your fingerprint, or your PIN. It feels faster and safer because there’s nothing to remember, nothing to type, and nothing for hackers to guess.

Behind the scenes, the passkey stays on your device. It never gets sent to Google’s servers, so even if a company gets hacked, your “key” isn’t sitting in a giant database waiting to be stolen. That’s the biggest reason Google wants this future: passwords are old, annoying, and easy to mess up.

But it’s not perfect. If you lose your phone and don’t have passkeys synced across your devices, getting into your account can be a pain. Some people also don’t love the idea that everything depends on biometrics - like, what if your fingerprint sensor is broken or you don’t want to use your face? And not every website supports passkeys yet, so you still end up juggling both systems for now. It’s a transition, and transitions are messy.

Still, Google is clearly pushing this direction. They won’t kill passwords overnight, but passkeys are slowly becoming the “normal” way to sign in. It’s smoother, it’s more secure, and it cuts out a lot of the frustration people have with passwords, even if there are a few bumps along the way.