Google Drops XMPP Support 416
Cbs228 writes "During last week's Google I/O conference, the company announced a replacement for its aging Talk instant messenger: Google Hangouts. Hangouts, which is only available for Android, iOS, and Chrome, offers closer integration with Google+. Unfortunately, the new product drops support for the XMPP instant messaging protocol, which has been an integral part of Talk for over ten years. XMPP delivers instant messages to desktop clients, like Pidgin, and enables communication between users on different instant messaging networks. Hangouts users attempting to communicate with contacts on non-Google servers, such as jabber.org, have found that all communications have been suddenly and inexplicably severed. A Google account is now required to communicate with Hangouts users. Google Hangouts joins the ranks of an already-crowded ecosystem of closed, incompatible chat products like Skype."
Interesting, because Google Wave was based on XMPP and Google was integral to the creation of the Jingle extension that enabled video chatting over XMPP. Note that no end date has been set for Talk yet, but the end must surely be nigh given Google's recent history of axing products like Reader and CalDAV support from their calendar app without much notice.
not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
My phone told me that an update to google talk was available, and that it would be replaced with hangouts. Google+ hasnt had a lot of traction with me, so I am not really sure if this is just going to be one less google product that I will be using now.
Re:not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
The hangout thing in gmail is also pretty, but I could not find a way to disable the sounds. *BLING* every time my window is not focused.
They are dropping reader, gchat is gimped. If they mess up gmail/calendar I might wonder why I even use google.
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Google+ hasnt had a lot of traction with me, so I am not really sure if this is just going to be one less google product that I will be using now.
It's going to be a lot more interesting, and presumably compelling when it's completed. Hangouts isn't intended as a simple chat client replacement.
Google dropping XMPP support is only mildly interesting, but the reason behind it is far more ambitious than TFA discusses. The Verge has a better article [theverge.com], but TLDR is that It's part of a long-term plan to change the way communication works on phones and computers.
XMPP obviously won't be suitable for unifying so many different communication paths. Given Google's
Re:Google+ has 390Million Actice users (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you would know that if you used Google Talk
You have always been able to add multiple users to Google Talk without needing Google+.
There are some serious privacy concerns with Google+, and a lot of people smart enough to avoid the whole Facebook clusterfuck are not at all keen to surrender to Google even if Google appears to be somewhat more responsible with your data.
I've never found a problem sending pictures to people, even groups of people. Why do you feel you need to surrender all your privacy instead of just emailing a photo?
Re:Google+ has 390Million Actice users (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never found a problem sending pictures to people, even groups of people. Why do you feel you need to surrender all your privacy instead of just emailing a photo?
This is something a lot of Slashdotters - especially the "privacy" tinfoil hat crowd, not that I'm saying that includes you - fail to grasp about the popularity of Facebook. The fundamental tradeoff of social networking sites is that you willingly give up some of your privacy - on the information you choose to make public - in exchange for making the information you consume from others less obtrusive.
For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch, or some cause they wanted to support, or some other piece of datum they felt like sharing with the world, it would be chaos. I would blacklist them all from my mailbox to avoid hundreds of spams a day and would only communicate with my very closest friends.
But with Facebook (or Google+ if anyone else I knew actually used it), people can post as much or as little as they like and I can consume that content as much or as little as I like. For you, the experience all depends on how often you want to check your social networking site. Many of my friends are Facebook-obsessed zombies, and they can check and post to FB all day, commenting back and forth all day on each others' cute cat pictures. For me, I check FB every week or so when I'm bored, and it will only show me updates from the friends I correspond with the most - but if I have time to kill and want to see what my freshman year roommate is doing, I can keep reading to see. Or if I'm going to meet a friend I haven't seen in a while, I can skim through their profile to catch up. At any rate, I have a feed of "social" information that I can pay as much or as little attention to as I like, and can easily keep in touch with a much broader range of people than I otherwise would have if I had to restrict the list to just the people I wanted to get regular e-mails from.
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For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch,
Why would someone you met at a conference send you a picture of their lunch?
The tradeoff with facebook is not what you think it is. It's not about making the content you consume from others less obtrusive, it removes the burden to them of figuring out wh
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If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch, or some cause they wanted to support, or some other piece of datum they felt like sharing with the world, it would be chaos.
If people I knew started e-mailing me pictures of their cats I'd be most obliged to redirect their mail to /dev/null. However, if people ran their own website or blog or whatever I would happily subscribe to their RSS feed and ignore the junk I didn't care about. And the best part of it is that there's no middle man, making money from it, datamining it, or whatever.
None of the features facebook/Google+/whatever offers wasn't available before all of this "social networking" craze took hold. Somehow I was abl
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Your expletive-laden post makes clear your generally a-social tendencies. You have a small circle of close friends and F--- everybody else.
Fine. But don't think you are the majority.
Wait two :) (Score:3)
Wait a second... Are you saying that all the people who don't realize that they themselves are the product sold by FB/G+ are the smart ones?
No I was referring to the fact that the individual, does not understand the fact that just because Hangout exists does not understand why email is suddenly not in existence.
If you think you are *sold* Google+ you are not really smart. Google whatever you think of it makes billions by *selling targetted advertising space* if it sold and user data its business model...and the billions would vanish overnight.
Facebook has different policies...and more worrying unscrupulous partners, who have there own large cas
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*stratches head*
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There are advantages of using Google+ which are group video calls; Sending Photos to everyone in your hangout; Start a hangout with the right people (Circle :)
No, the only advantage of Google+ is: It's not facebook.
How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so Google Talk is going away at some point, everyone I talk to who uses a different tool will no longer be reachable with "Hangouts", and I'll be confined only to my excruciatingly small circle of Google+ friends...
Why should I use Hangouts? It talks to only a few people in my circle of friends, all of whom also have accounts with some non-google resource.
Wouldn't this be yet another reason to abandon Google+? I mean, it's great 'n all, but almost nobody I know uses it. Which kinda defeats the purpose of a social network. It's like, let's invent a social network for hermits. Nobody talks to you, but that's what, you know, is supposed to happen. I haven't heard of anything so useless since the Anarchists Union.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not the point, the point is that if Google+ (or whatever they're naming their "standard") isn't open, then the cottage industry of third party IM clients (some of them are actually pretty decent) would roll over and die.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the point, the point is that if Google+ (or whatever they're naming their "standard") isn't open, then the cottage industry of third party IM clients (some of them are actually pretty decent) would roll over and die.
That's what puzzles me about the move: If Google said '95% of 3rd party XMPP servers are spam bots, we aren't doing federation unless you are a Google Apps customer or otherwise verifiably unlikely to do something dramatically stupid', that'd be annoying but not wildly surprising. Dropping XMPP entirely, though, both kills 3rd-party clients and suggests that they were either unable to shoehorn what they wanted into XMPP(even as a proprietary extension, with the standardized subset allowing partial compatibility), or they saw breaking compatibility as a virtue.
I suspect that federation(at least outside of paying customers, who are both more important to listen to, and less likely to be spambots), is viewed as more trouble than it's worth; but dropping XMPP entirely is an entirely different game.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Informative)
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I mean, it's great 'n all, but almost nobody I know uses it. Which kinda defeats the purpose of a social network
The anti-social network?
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Actually, there are several degenerate cases of social networks which could be thought of as anti-social.
First, there's the romantic option of a social network with only two members [zefrank.com]. Then, there's the narcissistic option of a social network with only one member. A true anti-social network, however, would have no members.
Excuse me while I go register nullspace.com.
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Sounds like Twitter.
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The anti-social network?
Well, there's something to be said for that. I have no particular desire to be part of Google's ecosystem, and I'm certainly not going to start using their products if I can't depend on them still being there tomorrow or the day after. Google is developing quite a habit of pulling the rug from under its users, and we shouldn't reward that.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the majority of your GTalk contact list are people from other XMPP/Jabber servers, you're in a tiny minority of overall users.
Most people using GTalk these days are doing so because it came on their Android phone, and they needed a Google account to buy apps. Most of their contacts are in the same boat. They may not be aware that this Google account they have is also a G+ account, and that's precisely what Google is pushing for here - notice that one of the features Hangout adds is the ability to send freshly snapped photos, and the way it does it is by means of a G+ photo album...
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people I know are using Google Talk because it works anywhere. It has an Android client, and a MacOS client (Messages), and a Linux client (typically Pidgin), and even a web client which works if you're behind a corporate firewall.
Admittedly, most people I know aren't most people. Nonetheless, dropping XMPP makes Google Talk much, much less useful.
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I guess that makes sense. So what open standard shall we replace XMPP with?
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I think the main reason people use a protocol that works with gtalk (including gtalk) is that of the tools with the highest name recognition, gtalk is the most well known that isn't a spambot generator (yahoo messenger) or isn't confined to Apple gear (whatever Apple uses). I think Microsoft has something and I think AOL is still out there, but of the tools with name recognition, gtalk is the most likely choice.
Although, less now.
I mean, at my work, my group all ran out and got google accounts, even the Ap
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm asking myself the same question about Picasa - Google has made it very difficult to share pictures outside of their ecosystem.
Google has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they don't "get" social - and equally has demonstrated a stunning inability to learn from their past mistakes.
Nothing to do with Google+ (Score:2, Troll)
Ok, so Google Talk is going away at some point, everyone I talk to who uses a different tool will no longer be reachable with "Hangouts", and I'll be confined only to my excruciatingly small circle of Google+ friends
...calm down, Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts...or that Android has passed 900Million Activations (Facebook has 700Million Active users). It works straight from gmail which has over 425Million users...hell there is even an iPhone app. Hell you can load it up...and still chat to people only using talk!
There are advantages to having a Google+ account, but its pretty limited...you can chat to 10 users at once. The bottom line though the success of Google+(growing faster than twitt
Re:Nothing to do with Google+ (Score:5, Insightful)
... Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts...
I'll buy that if by "active" you mean "someone said I should try it so I signed up and checked it out for an afternoon" or "I was forced to join Google+ to read the messages of a Groups thread someone pointed me to" or "I have a Google+ account? When did that happen? Oh, I guess I accidentally signed me up yesterday!" then sure.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/bugmenot/
http://www.mailinator.com/ (Use the alternate domains if necessary.)
You're welcome. :)
Re:Nothing to do with Google+ (Score:4, Insightful)
...calm down, Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts
Which doesn't mean a whole lot, since having a Google account at all now is basically a Google+ account. Signing up for Youtube means you are an "Active" google+ account.
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Which doesn't mean a whole lot, since having a Google account at all now is basically a Google+ account. Signing up for Youtube means you are an "Active" google+ account.
Actually it does not. I have a YouTube account, but no Google+.
Re:Nothing to do with Google+ (Score:5, Informative)
Only older accounts were able to remain separate. Any new accounts (be it YouTube, Gmail, or any other services they offer) are Google+.
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Wow, the level of idiocy you bleed out in your post kind of surprised me there for a moment. I was not aware that pointing out factual inaccuracies brands someone a "hater" and a "whiny bitch." I like how you also apparently gleaned from my message that I'm a Facebook user who is openly opposed to Google+? Cute.
For someone who "doesn't really give a fuck," you sure seem to be pretty uppity and defensive.
I don't even hate Google+, but the active account statistic is worthless.
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Not "hater" (how I wish that PC term would go away) but just a non-user. I have a google account (who doesn't?) but I don't remember the last time I logged into Google+. Everyone I know is elsewhere. Friends have a G+ account, but they never go there, which kinda defeats the purpose.
That's not "hating", that's picking up a tool, looking it over, and saying "why do I need this?"
Re: (Score:3)
I got an "active" google+ account.
why? google played me. by "upgrading" my youtube account attached to gmail. that's right, pressed "yeah blabla use the realname" and *boom* I'm an "active" google+ user. it didn't make it clear. up until that point I had been able to avoid my gmail account from being turned into a g+ account. with extra effort.
so the google+ userbase that they publicly tout is pretty much the number of gmail and youtube accounts in use.
yeah, so to re-iterate: google+ account numbers are bul
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Hey, don't look at me, my company tried to give me an i-phone, and I gave it back. I have used an android phone for a couple years now. The point of all of this is that I have friends who are... a little obsessive about their privacy or something, and insist on using one of the alternates instead of gtalk. It'll be interesting to see what they do. Actually, it'll be more interesting to see what *I* do. I'm looking for an alternate to ... what was the name changing to again? As I type.
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Strange how it asked me to make one or attach to an existing account every time I activated one. Must be hallucinations.
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Keep in mind that you can *still* plug your Google Account credentials into any XMPP chat client and use that account to talk to others who have a Google Account. Google isn't -yet- pulling the plug on XMPP client support; they're pulling the plug on XMPP server-to-server federation.
This move by Google is still a bowl of shit, but you retain the power to use the client (and plugins) of your choice when talking on the Google Network.
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and I'll be confined only to my excruciatingly small circle of Google+ friends...
Not, that part is wrong. The Hangouts replacement for Google Talk has no dependency on Google+.
At least not yet, but it looks like its heading in that direction.
It used to be that google was satisfied with simply and email address in exchange for all the advertising the dump on you.
But its clear the bargain has changed and they want to know everything about you in exchange for that email address.
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> And other than winning the fucking popularity contest, tell me exactly how Facebook is any different from this social network offering.
As a practical matter, the difference, exactly, is this: My friends are over there. My friends are not on Google+.
I mean, I personally consider the G+ interface a little screwy, but admit there are aspects that are undeniably superior to Facebook. But like Beta, G+ may be better, but in the world in which it chooses to compete, the number of users is important. Like
Closed protocol? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone know whether the new protocol will be undocumented or if it is documented, if there is any resemblance to xmpp? Hopefully Google will allow xmpp bridges.
I am just worried that Google is trying to do more to force us to use their tools, rather than allowing us to use our favourite messaging clients., but with their service.
Re:Closed protocol? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
From what I've read, it's still XMPP, but they've just severed server-server communications so you can only talk to Google+ accounts over XMPP.
I suppose with the lack of big names federating, there probably wasn't much to lose with this action?
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...and just a month after the FSF "commend Google for doing the right thing and respecting the importance of full federation" [fsf.org], after they reversed a Jabber invite block they started in March as an "anti-spam" measure. I guess it's now an "anti-privacy" measure, right Google? Or is it an "anti-Facebook" one? Oh, Larry Page...
iCal support in Calendar? (Score:3)
It's news to me that Google is dropping iCal support from Calendar. The whole rationale for them dropping support for ActiveSync was that standards based iCalendar support was available and most devices support that now (ie noone uses Windows Phone, they are all using Android or iPhone). So does someone have a supporting reference for that, or is the Unknown Lamer just confused?
Re: (Score:2)
They may be thinking of CalDAV - which you'll have to be whitelisted for.
Re:iCal support in Calendar? (Score:5, Informative)
Google's dropping support for CalDAV which I think was the primary supported way of syncing with iCal.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html [blogspot.com]
Re:iCal support in Calendar? (Score:4, Insightful)
My google calenders are all still working with Thunderbird. I went to the parent link and at the bottom of that blog post, they have an update where they reversed their decision to end CalDAV support. They say: "Update March 15, 2013: We worked with the developers who provide 98 percent of our current CalDAV traffic to assure access to the CalDAV API, which means many popular products will not be impacted. We remain committed to supporting open protocols like CalDAV."
So I guess making a stink really can make Google change their minds.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. I'll admit that I just searched long enough to find the blogspot post that I originally saw.
That statement doesn't make it clear to me that they are supporting CalDAV for the future, though--just that they've worked with the developers responsible for 98% of their CalDAV traffic. This is consistent with their previous statement--that CalDAV developers can get whitelisted. It sounds like iCal probably won't be affected (surely Apple is in that 98%) but it looks like new applications will be un
Re:iCal support in Calendar? (Score:5, Informative)
It's weasel-worded and misleading. You still need to get whitelisted to be allowed to access CalDAV - you have to write them a letter justifying yourself, otherwise you have to use the proprietary Google calendar API. They're just trying to create lock-in.
Re:iCal support in Calendar? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I mixed up the file format (ical) with the sync protocol (caldav). Thanks for catching that.
Bad call, loss of users (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought they were XMPP federation (Score:5, Informative)
I thought that what they were eliminating was XMPP federation, which is what's used to link all the different XMPP servers
But that's a far cry from eliminating XMPP entirely. I understood that they were continuing to use XMPP, with some extensions, and since those extensions were not supported by others, they were disabling the federation to other systems.
Re: I thought they were XMPP federation (Score:2, Informative)
This is correct. This article / post is misleading.
MSN -- Google Talk -- where? (Score:4, Interesting)
My friends and I used to be on Hotmail using MSN Messenger. Then we moved to Gmail when Messenger died, using Pidgin to keep everyone in the same circle (Yahoo, Gmail, and the few Hotmail stragglers). Now XMPP is gone, that leaves everyone looking for a new chat protocol, hopefully one within Pidgin.
It feels a bit like an open chat registry might be the way to go, as companies phase out their support for pure chat clients. I still need to chat and Facebook isn't going to cut it.
Re: (Score:2)
I always thought it was so weird when people used shit like MSN or Yahoo! for their chat. When someone gave me that as their IM contact, I would just tell them "look, I'm probably never going to end up talking to you, then, because I'm not going to setup an account on a proprietary service just to talk to one person".
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I still need to chat and Facebook isn't going to cut it.
Maybe not for you, but for most people I think it will. Most of the Internet users on the planet have Facebook accounts and it's increasingly the best way to chat or contact anyone. Google is pretty much just driving people back to Facebook with this. As long as it's all proprietary, you might as well go with the one with the biggest available group.
Re:MSN -- Google Talk -- where? (Score:4, Informative)
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I've been using AIM since the 90s... I was using the 5.9 version which was basically meant for Windows 98 because all it did was chat, opposed to their newer monstrosities. I only recently started using Trillian instead of the old aim client, which is just another client similar to Pidgin in functionality.
I'm kind of curious how long AIM will last.
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Google HANGOUTS drop xmpp support (Score:3)
It's not clear to me whether or not they're totally going to drop it.
Still, I think this blows.
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They're officialy dropping it. It was recently announced in an interview:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-mess [theverge.com]
(see video, circa 5:09)
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Several folks point out that they are "Replacing google talk with hangouts, which won't support xmpp."
Right.
I have a chat client that supports xmpp that I use with my gmail account. In my case that's ichat. Will my ichat client still be able to connect to a google xmpp server and do its thing? Note, this isn't a hangout client. I won't be able to talk to hangout users. But will I still be able to xmpp through google with other xmpp users?
Always innovative (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty soon they'll drop HTML support
We're already there. (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty soon they'll drop HTML support
One word. "Apps."
Google closing gates to its walled garden (Score:5, Interesting)
The old days of Google acting as a good net citizen are long gone. Money always corrupts, and its envy of Facebook and Apple walled gardens became irresistible.
Android is a sort of open garden, but Google got a taste of running a walled one with Android's Market/Play, and cemented its walls with Google+ and by making a full Google Account mandatory for it, Gmail's pseudonymous users absolutely not welcome. In the end, it'll be just another Facebook for a captive audience as advertising targets. Very profitable.
Dropping XMPP is just part of this process. A window to the walled garden was open and it was allowing federation to be done out of control by the Google empire. Easy to see this block coming and the window being closed.
The IETF specifically mentions interoperability as a founding goal in its Mission Statement. By dropping interoperability with other IM providers through XMPP, Google is making very clear where it now stands. It wants the whole cake, and being a good net citizen be damned.
I wonder what's going on at Google's management (Score:3)
This is a 180 degree term to their old philosophy of open source / open protocols.
Re:I wonder what's going on at Google's management (Score:5, Informative)
It's even more infuriating given:
"I've personally been quite sad at the industry's behavior around all these things. If you take something as simple as IM, we've had an open offer to interoperate forever." - Larry Page, May 15, 2013
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I don't usually say this, but mod this AC up! I don't know what the hell Larry is smoking, but it's like he's trapped inside a reversed RDF that completely hides the real world from him. Well, either that or he's the most two-faced liar I've seen outside of a career politician in years...
Old news? (Score:2)
This is old news. This was one of the first comments on the "Google releases Hangouts" a few days ago.
I've lost contact with about 40% of my contacts so far. Of those whom I can still talk to, about 20% use google with an xmpp client, and the other 40% are not google users (they use some other XMPP server).
Talk/Hangouts/Gmail vs. Lync/Skype/Outlook (Score:5, Interesting)
This mostly comes down to a battle between 2x platforms: Google vs. Microsoft. I consider myself a pretty avid Microsoft supporter, but if you look at the facts, I kind of think that Microsoft started this fight by:
1) Buying Skype and pitting Skype against Talk.
2) Their Scroogled campaign that pitted Outlook against Gmail
3) Connecting Outlook.com to the Talk API when Google would have preferred that Microsoft federate skype/outlook/hotmail/live/passport via XMPP.
It's that third point surrounding XMPP federation that this all comes down to. When Microsoft decided to not federate via XMPP with the Outlook/Skype consumer products they were saying that they only wanted to establish 1-way communication with Google's platform. There is no doubt that this pissed Google off because Microsoft is trying to take away their market share while also taking advantage of their services and open architecture. Google's offered up XMPP for many years and Microsoft never connected until they had a mail product that was capable of trading market share (in one direction).
Microsoft is clearly not against XMPP because they do support XMPP in their commercial IM product, Lync (which I'm a regular user of and competent in supporting/deploying). I've considered many scenarios but can't figure out why Microsoft wouldn't want to enable XMPP for its consumer products as a way of communicating with Google Talk contacts other than to discourage interoperability with their consumer products; e.g. keep everyone on Skype.
I know that some might argue that Microsoft connected to Google the way they did so that it could pull over all of your Google Contacts and already authorized XMPP invites, but in my opinion they could have just showed you a list of all your current Google Talk XMPP contacts and asked you to place check marks next to any that you wanted to invite to your Microsoft Account contact list. With all that said, maybe its as simple as that someone in the right position at Microsoft failing to comprehend the scenario.
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1) Buying Skype and pitting Skype against Talk.
I think Skype was around quite a bit longer, so you'd have to put it the other way around -- Google realized Skype's potential and came up with a competitor. Microsoft realized Skype's potential as well, and purchased them.
...they could have just showed you a list of all your current Google Talk XMPP contacts and asked you to place check marks next to any that you wanted to invite to your Microsoft Account contact list...
As of today's announcement from Google, they would have done all that work in vain. Perhaps MS realized that Google's commitment to XMPP was not something that could be relied upon?
Google fears Pack of 4 if it fear anyone (Score:2)
Google fears Microsoft more than it feared Skype.
Google face *competition* from the pack of 4 "Facebook,Apple,Amazon,Netflix" but not Microsoft, Microsoft currently are struggling to compete effectively against Google, and nothing seems to be changing that. Ironically one of the many reasons (the main being its not that good) form Windows Phone spectacular failure is its insistence on skype, something that the carriers despise.
Re:Talk/Hangouts/Gmail vs. Lync/Skype/Outlook (Score:5, Informative)
This was it. I remember from the I/O keynote, complaints about Microsoft exploiting some open standard to establish one-way compatibility, but I couldn't remember the details. Thanks. This comment ought to be at the top, it's most likely the reason XMPP support was dropped.
The world won't miss Google (Score:2)
This isn't evil; it's stupid. It's not even embrace/extend/extinguish. It's embrace/back_off/get_forgotten. Google is kidding themselves if they think anyone cares about .. what's the name of their obscure niche chat product again?
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Hangouts. And yes, it would be forgotten pretty quickly if you could call your hangouts contacts on skype, but not your skype contacts on hangouts. Which is exactly how Microsoft used Google's XMPP support.
Only 1 key product (Score:2)
Seriously Google needs to look at how much shaving off the Do no Evil badge will impair their brand.
Personally there are three products I use and think are important from Google.
1) Google search - best search I know.
2) Being able to ask a query (Google search) through the browser address bar, hence Chrome.
3) Chrome - best browser I know (Mac)
These are very heavily counterbalanced by the very close to evil if not evil level of disregard for / productization of private information.
I also am feeling fatigue fr
Android,Gmail,Youtube,Nexus,Google Apps... (Score:2)
Personally there are three products I use and think are important from Google
Ignore the poor use of "Do no evil" without showing evidence of the sucking the blood of virgins, or getting naked people to eat fruit.
The products that I think are important, are Chrome OS - Hell the desktop needs more love, Android for obvious reasons(900 Million activations). I'm not even mentioning maps...or gmail...or youtube...the list just goes on. Hell I actually their most game changing product is actually Google Apps for Business. I am going to ignore the Nexus range/Glass/Q/Driverless Car?. Searc
Why stop at XMPP? (Score:2)
Apparently google is quickly striving to catch up to AOL having not received the walled garden memo some 20 years ago.
Come on google... don't be stuck in the past.. throw away your crufty ole legacy support for POP3, IMAP and acceptance of SMTP messages from the few third party domains who dare not use gmail. It will be great.
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Still better than talking to a hand. Google doesnt listen to the users, they dont even have a place to post any concerns/complaints (probably because there was no way to automate it).
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Re:Thanks google for the open web. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thanks google for the open web. (Score:5, Funny)
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browser agnostic web page (Score:2)
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Gtalk is a small light memory demand application. I generally set it up to run whenever a computer boots. A browser is much more memory intensive. To use the Gmail page as a Gtalk client you not only would have to keep the browser running whenever someone else might want to talk to you, but you would have to keep a browser window open on your Gmail page. And aside from the memory demand issue, that could also be a big security issue, particularly if you want to be available from computers that others might get access to, such as from work. I don't log out of my computer every time that I go to get a coffee refill, and don't want to, and sometimes those little trips outside of one's office can turn into multi-hour meetings or firefights. I wouldn't want to get into the habit of leaving my browser logged into my personal mail account (or have to have multiple ones that my friends are expected to search through to find me), it is just too much of a security risk.
Um... where do I start? I was commenting on the availability of the Hangouts replacement, not Gtalk, there is no desktop application for Hangouts that I know of which would seem to go against NotBorgs complaint of requiring a specific application to access an online service. Also, how does security come into play here? If you're leaving your computer unlocked while logged into your Gmail page and worried that people might do something, lock your computer. Using the Gtalk application logged in instead of a b
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Dropping XMPP support is "evil"? Your threshold for doing evil is set very low.
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I wouldn't call this "evil". But they should, if they're acting in good conscience, drop the phrase "universally accessible" from their corporate mission statement.
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Creaking Monopoly (Score:2)
MS has a monopoly on what today?
Desktop...Apps :)
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I saw it happen, plus the resulting confusion. What's really shocking is how long ago it was. It was around 1985. English teacher gave hard assignment. Student said "that's so gay!" meant as a generic pejorative. Teacher thought he was being called a homosexual and student was in deep shit.
It happened, over a quarter century ago. I can cut the 1985 teacher some slack for not knowing. I can cut a 2013 teacher some slack for disciplining a student for bitching about homework. But I can't cut anyone sl
Re:Bad Google (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't get to decide when a word is pejorative to a group that's historically been targeted with it. I agree strongly with George Carlin when he talks about the ludicrousness of "bad words." There are no "bad words." But you know what there *are?* There are words that have been used offensively against a minority group so often that they've become hurtful *to* that group of people.
You have a right to use those words anyway. You have a right to not care. You have a right to claim that because YOU don't find the word offensive, no one else has a right to do so, either.
You also have a right to decide that decades of discrimination against a particular group were so awful, you'll avoid using a word or two -- not because those words are "bad," but because they serve as reminders of abuse, insults, and ignorance. You have a right to decide to change your speaking habits *ever* so slightly as a way of demonstrating to this person or persons that you don't agree with the way those words were used against them.
You have a right to decide that empathy and acknowledgement is more meaningful than saying a certain collection of phonemes.
Or not to.
Re:Bad Google (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not actually a generic pejorative though, it's a common pejorative among 13-year olds.
The effect is that using it as an adult makes you sound childish...
Thinking Like Google (Score:2)
Google seems to be thinking like Microsoft/Apple these days..
Well actually Google is not thinking like either. Apple managed to cash in on early adopter money three times...but failed to compete in a mature market, its early monopoly status thrown away for sitting on huge about of cash, Microsoft throwing it all away to chance mobile market share by dumbing down its Desktop experience to that of a tablet :), Google is doing neither of those things.
Neither Apple or Microsoft is competing in the social networking sphere (ignoring photo sharing sites) and both were happ
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Actually, I think you're routing your calls through Google Talk even if you make your VoIP calls from within Gmail. If you "Try the new Hangouts" from within Gmail, you'll find that you can no longer make GV calls until you switch back to the old Google Talk interface.
I'm glad to see that Nikhyl Singhal of Google reassuring users that the cutting-off of GV is only temporary, and that it will be integrated with Hangouts/Gmail later: https://plus.google.com/106636280351174936240/posts/DG6h32BWaQW [google.com]
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I refuse to pay for a texting plan you insensitive clod!
More so, why would I when I can do various messaging services from my phone via the data plan I'm already paying for? Anyone who needs to contact me has been taught that if they text me... I will yell and demand they pay me $0.25 per text sent... and that IM (or better yet email) is the best way to catch me.
None the less... you speak like a person who is... 25+? While SMSing used to be all the rage of the cool kids i
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And if that person has (or primarily uses) a house phone, not a cell phone...?
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I think it's safe to say that the state of instant messaging is truly fucked right about now.
Google seems to keep making bone-headed moves it thinks will drive people to actually start using its moribund Google+ network; and, like all the past moves, it almost certainly will not work.
I say this somewhat - but not completely - tongue in cheek: Will we see a day when Google decides Android phones can no longer do SMS, because "our new GMS (Google Messaging Service) provides a superior messaging platform through integration with your Google+ circles"?
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2010 called, they want their post back. Google+ is second only to Facebook in active users, it's not moribound by any stretch of the imagination. Though you could be forgiven for thinking that if you're not using it (as unlike e.g. Twitter and YouTube, it's not so visible from the outside, by design).
They don't want to force people to Google+. They want to prevent skype from using the google talk address book without offering its own in return.
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