Google drops XMPP support

http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2013/05/hangouts-wont-hangout-with-other.html?m=1

by john_w_t_b • 13 years ago

90 41 13 years ago

windowspbx.blogspot.com

Nux2• 13 years ago

Jump ship, guys! SMTP is next!

Derbasti• 13 years ago

I jumped a long time ago. But to this day, there is no web app comparable to GMail or GCal.

Svip3• 13 years ago

Not that it matters, GMail has slowly become worse and worse, so I'll gladly settle for pine or mutt these days (or Thunderbird as a start). Google Calendar will likely be the only application I will miss.[1]

But Google is slowly giving me more and more reason to jump ship.

[1] Application I will miss that Google has not already killed (or is going to).

pjmlp• 13 years ago

Desktop...

fakeer2• 13 years ago

Looks like an open market without hardly a player other than Google and the elk. There's a market specially for paying customers.

zmb_• 13 years ago

When it comes to services like email, the quality of the user interface is really secondary. The primary concern is the ability to trust that I will remain accessible through the identifier (email address) that I've spread around to many people and places over the years.

Given Google's service shutdowns, dropped support for protocols, and the horror stories of seemingly accidental account closures with no recourse, I simply cannot trust Google with something as critical as my email.

sunkencity• 13 years ago

I for one welcome our new SMTP overlords which support deletion instead of archiving of messages.

larsberg• 13 years ago

fastmail.fm has made me extremely happy as a mail replacement, though I've been using icloud for calendar, so I can't speak to their replacement for that.

The only downside to the fastmail mail is you need ~200 spams learned before the bayseian filter kicks in, so the first two days were a bit "noisy" for me. After that, though, it reduced the ~10 spams per day that would make it through gmail down to 1 every other day.

patrickaljord3• 13 years ago

Google still support XMPP, it's just that it's not federated (edit: according to 0x006A, it still is so they may just be blocking Microsoft). It's been federated for years though but what was the effect of that? Has Microsoft made MSN messenger interoperable, have they done so with Skype? Have Yahoo? How about Facebook?

Thing is, as Larry said, they support open messaging but why should they do so with companies that don't reciprocate? Last week, Microsoft decided to take advantage of gtalk federated XMPP to make it usable inside Outlook, this is awesome. However, did they make skype usable inside of gmail? No. So Microsoft is happy to use google's messaging federated openness but refuses to share their messaging with Google which gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. As Larry said, they support openness but not to the point of shooting themselves in the foot by giving Microsoft a commercial advantage by integrating gtalk in Outlook while there's no way for Google to do so with Microsoft's Skype.

I think this is pretty fair from Google to defend themselves. And it really takes nerves from Microsoft for complaining about someone blocking them on their messaging network when they have been the king of blocking messaging network with MSN and Skype. Come on.

0x006A• 13 years ago

i keep reading that its not federated and yet i am still chatting with people on gmail via xmpp via my own xmpp server.

mike-cardwell• 13 years ago

For now

mdwrigh2• 13 years ago

Until they upgrade to hangouts from GTalk, federation will continue to work.

Nux2• 13 years ago

It's not about Yahoo and other big players. The edge GTalk had was it was capable of talking to my server and to my friends' servers. Now that edge is gone, but it's really not needed any more, they have enough mass to not care.

patrickaljord3• 13 years ago

This is exactly about Skype, Yahoo and others. Only a handful geeks and sysadmins use Gtalk as an XMPP relay to talk to. Losing these few edge cases has no impact at all on Google, however, MS and Yahoo being able to have an unfair advantage does have impact on Google (and by unfair advantage, I mean MS and Yahoo being able to talk to Gtalk but Gtalk not being able to talk to Skype and Yahoo Messenger).

Svip3• 13 years ago

I don't find the argument that 'if the other guys are jerks, then I too can be a jerk' to be an argument that makes me see anyone in a more favourable light. I thought Google wanted to avoid being Microsoft and Apple, with their unofficial motto, 'don't be evil'.

I prefer it when someone showcases their willingness to be 'the nicer guy' by opening up while the others are closing down. Like allowing to export your GMail contacts, while Facebook won't go the other way around.

I always find Microsoft complaining to be hypocritical, they are usually committing a similar overreach towards a competitor themselves. But still, where are the 'good guys'?

I know, that would be naïve, this is business.

rbanffy• 13 years ago

> I don't find the argument that 'if the other guys are jerks, then I too can be a jerk' to be an argument that makes me see anyone in a more favourable light.

Why would Google want to invest resources on giving Microsoft an unfair advantage over themselves? Microsoft being jerks is the rule since that open letter Bill Gates sent to the Homebrew Computer Club.

In other words, why would you invite a guest that is known to steal stuff and not flush toilets into your home?

patrickaljord3• 13 years ago

It's not about being jerks too, it's about being able to compete. They can't compete by giving away free stuff to competition when the competition refuses to do the same which gives the competition an unfair advantage (in this case, MS customers being able to use both gtalk and skype inside of outlook but Google customers being unable to run skype inside gmail, this makes people just want to use outlook as it provides more than gmail thanks to MS unwillingness to open skype, see the difference?).

chris_wot2• 13 years ago

That is hopelessly naive, and not only that but it allows Microsoft to continue to lock in people to their own products.

Think about this: Microsoft spent a fair amount of resources integrating with gtalk, now they can't use it. The only way for them to gain access is to open up their own platforms. Once they do, then everyone is on a more level playing field.

The days of Microsoft shafting the competition through lock-in and anti-competitive behaviour is fast coming to an end. I'm not shedding any tears.

davexunit• 13 years ago

Will they only be blocking Microsoft, or will they shut off federation completely? I have an account on the FSF's XMPP server and I can talk to people on gtalk. If they are shutting off federation completely, then they are just making a walled garden for themselves and using the Microsoft situation as an excuse.

josteink• 13 years ago

The irony of this coming from Microsoft, a company which has never had a single mainstream XMPP-based product and owner of Skype, which has sent Cease and Desist letters to people creating Skype-XMPP bridges, is not lost on me.

That said, if Google keeps locking down all their former open products/platforms, I will be fleeing ship.

If Hangouts (which replaces Gtalk) drops XMPP support, I see no reason to keep using it.

fdr_cs• 13 years ago

The sad part is that you will, and some more people will to, but, the mass, will not, because they don't care. If they did, they would not accept ms closed format instead of odt, they would not accept facebook, and would w3c would not create drm extensions as 'open standars' . That's what's sad.

blablabla1232• 13 years ago

> the mass, will not, because they don't care.

They don't know. Many of those people use multiple instant messengers in parallel, some even use messenger that speak multiple protocols. If these people knew they could interoperate all those, they'd find it awesome.

BTW, drm has nothing to do with interoperation. At least nothing negative, because it enables proprietary content to be delivered in a platform-neutral fashion. Thus killing one more reason to use/create proprietary browser plugins.

gnoway• 13 years ago

This kind of looks like a fight Google was never going to win. They either continue doing what they were doing and allow MS to take competitive advantage of their openness, or they shut the door and MS wins again because Google is suddenly evil.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what happened here, but right now this looks like a perfect example of "see, this is why we can't have nice things," played out in the real world.

blablabla1232• 13 years ago

So Google is becoming the new Microsoft and vice versa...

jkhanlar• 13 years ago

"Avaya and many others will also loose interoperability" as opposed to tighten interoperability.

xor-ed-wolf• 13 years ago

One more proof that any good organization becomes money-hungry zombie when reaches certain size.

Google drops XMPP support

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