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.
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: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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Bad Google (Score:3, Interesting)
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 slack in 2013 for not knowing "gay" is a generic pejorative. If you don't know gay is a generic pejorative by now, then you also probably missed the memo that it means homosexual. You probably think it means "happy."
Words. They're like tech skills. Keep up or be left behind.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
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 efforts with WebRTC, I suspect that'll be the underlying standard for their new platform, though it hasn't been stated as such anywhere I'm aware of.
Re:How does this help Google+? (Score:2, Interesting)
Google has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they don't "get" social - and equally has demonstrated a stunning inability to learn from their past mistakes.
They don't get social for anything. They continuously mess up YouTube's layout, despite massive outcry from the users. They changed Google Play to force people to have Google+ accounts just to post reviews, despite user outcry. They messed up the layout of Gmail, making it about 10x slower and harder to navigate, despite user outcry. They messed up Google Image Search by taking away options and censoring everything, despite user outcry. They messed up Google Search so that relevant results are harder to find while ads at the top have been disguised to look like results. And now this dropping support for IM clients to force people to create Google+ accounts if they want to stay in touch with their Google Talk contacts.
Basically Google loves to make changes for no reason other than to make changes and they don't give a shit about what the users want. I have already dumped all of their services and when I buy a new phone this year, it won't be another Android.
Re:Bad Google (Score:2, Interesting)
Fuck rights, you both have the responsibility to learn to act in a way that doesn't offend either of you, because if you're causing offense, you've failed to communicate properly. Be conservative in what you do and liberal in what you expect from others.