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.
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]
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.
Re:Closed protocol? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:MSN -- Google Talk -- where? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thanks google for the open web. (Score:4, Informative)
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:Nothing to do with Google+ (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: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+.
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
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:5, Informative)
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.