How Google Could Overthrow AIM

An anonymous reader writes "There's an interesting article over at Apple-X.net that speculates on the possibility of an instant-messaging service offered by Google that would be based on the open Jabber protocol. If Jabber was supported by a major company like Google, it could dominate over proprietary services such as AIM or MSN."

Comments

hahah.

[jabella]

speculates on the possibility

just made me laugh.

Re:hahah.

[soimless]

hey if this dose over though AIM or MSN you could allways run a open aim or msn sever as a hobby and something that would just make you and others laugh. Just like i am playing to run a napster server for the irc like part of it.

Re:hahah.

[Anonymous Coward]

It might happen though. If Google backs Jabber it'd be really good, and it'd be a bullet in MS and AOL's wing.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no advantage to using one IM service over another, so why anybody switch?

Re:why?

[turnstyle]

I think the question of Google IM will hinge on the success of GMail, and especially the placement of Google Ads in GMail.

If it works in GMail, expect to see GIM.

Re:why?

[ad0gg]

Yes there is. Better Emoticons!

Re:why?

[Jonavin]

Yes, how many times have you said ... "there are no emoticon to show how I feel right now"

Re:why?

[GoMMiX]

Because there is a major advantage to switching to an open IM protocol.

For one, you can write your own client to work with the service(s). Secondly, the service(s) are not dependant on a specific client so the IM network as a whole is substantially more secure.

I love jabber. Checkout Coccinella.

There are multitudes of other clients available, widely, for just about any platform you can think of.

Just like other open source projects, open source IM protocol(s) bring 'choice' back into the users hands. Sure, you can download Trillian or whatever and get on multiple IM services - but it's messy and the proprietary protocols (particularly Yahoo) are constantly being changed to prevent other messenger apps from working on their networks.

Just love it. Man, hope Google does do this. *Laughs* Like I needed another reason to love Google. :)

Re:why?

[AKAImBatman]

I think that using a Web Interface like Google does with GMail, would give them a distinct advantage. For one, you'd never have to worry about software upgrades or installation. For another, just about any content can be pushed to you. In fact, I really can't think of a single down side to using a webapp for instant messaging.

The only possible issue is that the logs and message transmissions would have to go through Google's servers. Personally, I don't mind that. At least I'd know that ALL settings and history are saved between machines instead of the classic issue of SOMETHING being lost when I jump from machine to machine. Not to mention that it would be the ultimate in cross-platform compatibility.

Re:why?

[nkh]

If (and only if) it's based on Jabber and can communicate with every Jabber-compliant existing client, it will be easy to filter all the advertisements by dropping the unwanted XML tags.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there is a major advantage to switching to an open IM protocol.

Like anyone fucking cares about that.

No, really, I'm not trying to troll here. Who really cares about that? Lets see some case studies of marketing strategies based around "open standards." I want to see just one where people looked at two products and all other things equal they went with the one that said "open standards" on the box.

You must be in nerd la-la-land if you really believe this shit.

Re:why?

[nodwick]

Because there is a major advantage to switching to an open IM protocol. For one, you can write your own client to work with the service(s).

Are you serious? How many people do you know who are running IM clients they've written themselves? This isn't going to be the selling point to get people to ditch their old networks. IM networks aren't like operating systems: it's not enough that YOU switch to your favorite open source alternative, if you want to have anyone to talk to you'd better convince all your friends to switch too.

Another post talked about the "good old days" before IM fragmentation when everyone just used ICQ. In my view, the golden opportunity for everyone else to get market share was when Mirabilis failed to update ICQ so that it would work through corporate firewalls. Before long, all the kids who were crazy about IM in college graduated, found out they couldn't run ICQ through their company's corporate firewall, and moved en mass to other networks like Yahoo that had workarounds. By the time ICQ caught up, it was too late, people had already switched.

If Google is going to get their IM network to take off, it's going to take something about existing IM networks that can similarly simultaneously annoy you and all your friends into switching. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but it'll probably have to be something stronger than the lure of having everyone code their own client.

Re:why?

[Rallion]

The single most important deature in an IM service, by far, is user base. How many people care if a service is open protocol or not? Not enough to make it popular enough to appeal to anybody else, that's how many.

Re:why?

[Aerog]

Will they switch? Sure they will. People switch because they're lemmings. Look at MSN. I guarantee most of the people I know on MSN only got it because somebody else they knew was on it, who got it because somebody else was on it...

Plus it's Google. I like GMail, think the interface is good for what I do with it, and if they can extend that to messaging then they can start to turn the geek crowd who will then make somebody else do it and the lemming effect kicks in.

Personally, this may be enough for me to install something like it again. Right now I will NOT install MSN and will never install it because of a few personal dislikes. However, Google? That could and may be enough for many to make the move. ... That and I find the text ads interesting and sometimes funny, but not invasive...

Re:why?

[thewldisntenuff]

Doesn't matter if you can make your own client....

Two important things to IM

-Ease of use

When I say ease of use, it's relatively easy to IM someone else you know, (ie - SN). Joe Sixpack doesn't want an ICQ id #, he wants a funny name like joesixpack900000 to talk to people with, maybe send pictures, and he doesn't want to write his own client or deal with inane settings....AIM and MSN cover this pretty well

-User base

More users = more popular...You're not going to use something no one else uses, open source or not

Re:why?

[vanillacoke]

When I write in my livejournal.

"I NEED something that displays my crushing sadness while moping to some dashboard

B-(

Ah, that's it."

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave me out of this. ~GIM

Re:why?

[kfg]

Google Ads in GMail.

It's worse than that, it's spam, GIM.

KFG

Re:why?

[SignificantBit]

do you mean something like this.

Re:why?

[raulfragoso]

There is no noticeable advantages if you only look from the IM client perspective, but if you take into account possibilites like:
- Expand Jabber functionality to meet your specific needs;
- Integrate Jabber with other messaging and communication platforms (VoIP is the first thing that comes to mind :-));
- It runs on almost any platform;
- You don't need to do any reverse engineering to use it;
- It is highly expansive;

you will notice that it *does have* advantages over other IM protocols, mainly if you care about interoperability.

Re:why?

[name773]

all good things, except that it would most likely be a java applet... slow and requiring a huge jre and browser support for that jre

Re:why?

[u-238]

Even if not there will surely be some work around, much like AIM+ and DeadAIM, which can remove all the advertisments and popup windows and notifications and other ridicuilous excesses in AIM.

Re:why?

[AKAImBatman]

Ummm... no. Try AIM Express. It does just about everything the real AIM does, but it's a webapp!

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or this or this or this. Yep, it's all been done. And they're also freaking annoying to use, IMHO.

Re:why?

[hey]

Are *you* serious?

(Hardly Anybody writes shell scripts for Windows because the shell sucks. But in the Linux/Unix world tons of users write useful shell scripts.

Likewise, if there's a protocol, the applications are easier to write and more people can make them!

Re:why?

[name773]

it would be cool if it worked. i tried konqueror 3.2.3, mozilla 1.7, and firefox 0.9.1...

Re:why?

[AKAImBatman]

I'm using it on Mozilla right now. The only thing you have to do is set Mozilla to not block popups for "aimexpress.aim.com". It should actually give you a helpful message about that. *shrug*

Re:why?

[Just Some Guy]

How many people do you know who are running IM clients they've written themselves?

I do. Or more correctly, the company I work for runs the IM client that I wrote. Why? Because we wanted to add web accessibility to our IM system, and it was nearly trivial to throw that onto our Zope server. What's the going rate for integrating MSN or Yahoo! onto a pre-existing Unix web server these days?

Yeah, I realize that this is a very atypical situation, but just because you don't know someone who's written their own client doesn't mean that noone has. There are a lot of niches where Jabber scales down brilliantly, but where the old, closed systems don't seem to scale down at all.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any fucked up browsers you didn't try?

Re:why?

[acebone]

Ease of use:

Google provides the client in a browser window. All you need to do is to click GIM on the google frontpage, and you're loggin on to the network.

Each chatline sent by the users is aggregated into a periodic search, adds are always on topic.

The userinterface is rich if the client supports it. Nothing too fancy, just typically google simple and to the point. If the client does not support it - it scales down gracefully, even to the point where it is totally server-based and relies on screenrefreshes (no frames of course)

The rich client is up for grabs. Anybody can implement their own frontend of GIM on their own webpage free of charge IF they show the google text-ads according to some guidelines laid out by google.

User base:

Google.com

It's there.

This would not preclude a downloadable executable that gave you voice/video/files transfer as well. The client would be based on Jabber - Google would even help extend the Jabber technology in order to accomplish this. Lotsa good karma on that one, plus a slew of both developers and clients.

I believe that if they do this - they'll probably end up a penny or two better off, I know I'd do it if I were them

Re:why?

[1000StonedMonkeys]

I run an IM client that someone else wrote: gaim.

I think you'll find this is true of quite a lot of people. The benefit of an open protocol for most people isn't that they can write their own client, it's that they will have numerous clients to chose from and they can take their pick. With a closed system like AIM or Yahoo, you still have the unofficial clients, but you have to worry about the networks purposely breaking them every once in a while.

I mean, face it, the official AIM client is a complete and utter piece of shit (only surpassed in crappyness by the official ICQ client, which is why ICQ lost my business). I can't comment on the Yahoo client, as I've never used it, but let's just say I don't expect much. If you're still running an official client, I feel sorry for you. Unless you like adds.

The reason people will switch is because they're already running Gaim or Trillian and adding another network is just as simple as adding some contact info into a configuration dialog. Eventually people will run out reasons to use the closed networks.

Re:why?

[Beale]

At least with an open protocol, over half the clients for it might properly support its file transfer features.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people do you know who are running IM clients they've written themselves?

I do. Or more correctly, the company I work for runs the IM client that I wrote.

So your answer is one. You are running an IM client you wrote yourself. Wow. Amazing. That's overwhelming anecdotal evidence.

Re:why?

[naily]

Let's face it, now google have floated, they have a public obligation (albeit minor) to innovate, to grow beyond search. Given their infrastructure, a webOS has been the most obvious suggestion. Just as any modern OS needs the key comms tools: email (asynchronous) and IM (synchronous text/voice/vid), so does a webOS.

The sooner we stop these ludicrous closed IM systems, the better. Could you imagine having 4 phones in your house for different telcos?

Re:why?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

--
The secret to getting modded up is to allways say i've got karma to burn in your sig..

Why would I say that You've got karma to burn in My .sig?
Oops. Damn, there goes the rest of my Karma.

Re:why?

[labratuk]

For one, you can write your own client to work with the service(s).

But that also means the spammers can write their own clients to send out thousands of messages. Jabber becomes the new email. With proprietary messengers, the companies obfuscate things to make it difficult for anything other than the official client to connect, and of course the official client doesn't have the crazy spamming possibilities.

Don't get me wrong, I like jabber, no, I love jabber (use it all the time as my only IM protocol), I just haven't figured out what the answer to this one is yet. I still believe the answer is an open protocol. It's just leaving a question mark over my head right now.

Any answers?

Re:why?

[wastingtape]

Bravo. Very insightful reply, but i believe the parent still has a good point. Not in the fact that the average-joe can develop his/her own client, but in the fact that development has less red tape that proprietary solutions.

I think we've seen in the past that developer support is a very big, if not deciding issue for the evolution of technologies. Let me throw this into a scenario. Because of the red tape and licensing required to use the "oscar" protocol, or because of the crippled "toc" companies may opt to include jabber support in next generation cellphones. As phones roll out with Jabber (and GIM) support users will be downloading and installing those clients to chat live with thier cellphone-carrying peers. Keep in mind this is an example

History has also proven that software on the user's desktop is the slowest to change, but it's also shown us that it's not impossible. Take for example Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Switching IM clients isn't impossible. Just don't expect it to happen overnight.

Re:why?

[xenocytekron]

You're wrong, of course. The reason tons of Linux/Unix users write shell scripts is because the majority of users who would write shell scripts, use Linux/Unix. And the fact is that the majority of computer users run windows, and the majority of windows users do not have any need to write shell scripts, not to mention the knowledge necessary to do such a thing.

Re:why?

[M51DPS]

This got me wondering.... would Google somehow make it so that whatever conversation you're having would generate text ads on the side that are "relevant to your conversation"? That would freak people out even more than text ads about your mail.

Re:why?

[black mariah]

I'm sorry to inform you that your argument makes too much sense. Please hand over your Slashdot membership card and vacate the premises.

Thank you,
Management

Re:why?

[black mariah]

Well, at least he didn't try Dillo or Lynx. He has that much sense...

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree totally. Like most people, I've never even heard of a .bat file. And nobody remembers all those days tweaking autoexec.bat files.

Re:why?

[name773]

i.e. and aol :)

Re:why?

[cshark]

Google has an interesting and unusual perspective on things, which is why I like them. If they were to create an IM client, I have no doubt that it would not be just another IM client. I'm sure they're working on it too. Question is how do you do anything new with IM? Maybe some kind of hybrid IM that works with Gmail. Yahoo has been playing around with something like this; I don't see why Google couldn't take it the extra step.

As far as toppling AIM; just don't bother. They'll topple themselves eventually. The AIM service is saturated with spyware, too many ads, and annoying "features" that don't do much of anything. I remember Bob Cringely said "the only way to compete with Microsoft is to ignore them" (paraphrasing). I think that has to be true of any real market power, in just about any market. If you spend more time paying attention to building a better product, and less time worrying about what your competition is doing, then you'll win every time. It's a nice hypothesis, and it kind of runs counter to conventional logic in the industry, but it rings true.

Bear in mind that all this is highly speculative. Even if they're actually working on it, there's no guarantee that it will even see the light of day. Rather than do something that's been done to death, why not have Google do something completely new? Don't know, maybe something like a searchable syndication service, or an archive.org style way back machine that uses the Google cache? But that's really not all that new of an idea. Don't know, maybe I'm just not creative enough to work for Google.

Re:why?

[natrik]

For crying out loud, this is slashdot! Hasn't anyone here ever heard of Gaim? Or for that matter, Gaim-Encryption? I have one cellphone for use with any telcos's subscribers. (and I can take it in my pocket) Same with GAIM for IM.

Re:why?

[aggiefalcon01]

If Google is going to get their IM network to take off, it's going to take something about existing IM networks that can similarly simultaneously annoy you and all your friends into switching. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but it'll probably have to be something stronger than the lure of having everyone code their own client.

Like popup advertisements? I wouldn't mind a VERY few text ads appearing in the bottom corner of my IM windows. Popup image ads, and the useless AIM Today screen (and similar, on other networks) annoy the heck out of me, and make me pine for a better alternative.

Re:why?

[scovetta]

And then of course, all of the clones, like "GIM & Tonic", "GIMMY", and the others...

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever use Trillian? GAIM? Miranda? Huge improvements over the existing IM services.

Re:why?

[NuclearDog]

You could theoretically spam MSN or AOL today (GAIM & others have implemented it, documentation for the MSN protocol is everywhere). So if you could spam it, why is no one doing it?

A) There are settings in MSN (not sure about AOL) allowing you to only accept messages from people on your contact list. This means only people that YOU want can contact you.
B) 13 year olds don't buy Viagra.

ND

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we let spammers control our lives ? You have given up your freedom (open protocols and free software) to get a rest from the spammers. You have sold your soul.

Re:why?

[drapmeyer]

I'd call it GTalk, like in ...Point, ...String, ... to make it attractive.

Re:why?

[Donny Smith]

Yeah of course - as soon as you hit Enter, the client could extract keywords and use HTTP protocol to get related Google adset.
They could also get abstracts based on the past x lines so that they don't show stupid ads, or show you ads based on your mailbox at Gmail, etc.

Re:why?

[trentblase]

Question is how do you do anything new with IM?

Who wants to bet that google stores entire chat logs serverside and then offers amazing seach and cross-indexing capabilities? I always liked ICQ's ability to store message history, but this always broke when I logged in from more than one computer. AIM has just recently gotten up to speed with a very rudimentary multiple-computer login scheme.

Re:why?

[gilesjuk]

Not to mention systems are generally more accessible to all kinds of devices if the protocols they use are in the open. Sometimes that's good, other times it's bad. But it encourages progression and the tightening of security.

Re:why?

[timmyf2371]

Of course, because Gaim is so heavily marketed and promoted it has such a good chance of becoming the standard instant messenging service with the majority of internet users.

[/sarcasm]

I use Gaim when using a Linux-based computer - with over 512mb RAM on my Windows machine, I have no problems in running MSN, Aol Messenger, and IRC with no noticable performance drop - and therefore Gaim (the Windows version) would be a poor alternative in my eyes.

For the record, I have no problems in using a Jabber-based IM, or one which supports all protocols - but the implementation must be better and accessible to the entire internet population than Gaim currently is.

Re:why?

[swherdman]

Oh so the google bot will be reading our messages in hopes of supplying adds related to what i am sending messages to people about?

Re:why?

[It'sYerMam]

But who uses google regularly? It doesn't matter to many people that it is open-source, but if google starts throwing its holy weight around in the name of open-source, hopefully people will use that service. Google is well known and well thought of - I'd certainly use GIM, GTalk or whatever they call it.
I'd welcome the opportunity to tell some of my friends "Hey, look - it's free, better than MSN, its email service gives you 1GB, it's attached to the best search engine on the planet - Huzzah!" With no mention of microsoft or OSS.
I was hoping that Google would do this - they have the weight to push OSS forward.

Re:why?

[TheRaven64]

The reason for lack of file transfer support in Jabber clients is that the way file transfer was implemented has recently changed. Originally, files were sent as links to out-of-band resources, and the sending client would then run a small web server to send the files. This was not very flexible (and was a pain to operate through firewalls / NATs). The new standard defaults to initiating a direct connection, but can fall back to using a SOCKS proxy or in-band bytestreams (i.e. send-through-server).

Re:why?

[TheRaven64]

Writing a simple Jabber client in PHP is not very hard (I did it in a weekend a couple of years back*). It only supported sending/receiving messages and viewing the roster, but that's probably 90% of IM interaction taken care of.

* The reason this is not available for use is that it used a really ugly hack to manage persistent connections to the server. A better solution is to use a small server-side client and a PHP (or whatever) front-end. I plan on doing this once I have got to version 1.0 in the GNUStep / OS X Jabber client I am currently working on (in my copious free time).

Re:why?

[MikeDX]

I run an IM client that someone else wrote: gaim.
I think you'll find this is true of quite a lot of people.

Please forgive my ignorance on this one.. but I think EVERYBODY uses an IM client that comebody else wrote. Unless of course you actually wrote the whole thing yourself (and how many of those are there.. ?) Using an IM library doesnt count - any idiot can write a frontend.

Re:why?

[galfy]

If you think IM client with web interface is good idea you can start testing Laffer http://laffer.sf.net/ which is open source project and work quite well for such new project.

Re:why?

[formzero]

to me it seems like user base might have BEEN what was important. i don't know too many people these days that aren't running a multi-protocol IM client.

it seems that over the years everyone has chosen what they seemed to like best as far as what service, and now everyone has tons of IM contacts on every kind of protocol available, sometimes even the same person on 3 different protocols.

i think if google decided to do this, A LOT of people would move over just because of googles branding. normal, everyday people bought up googles stock because of their brand, not because of their computer scientists research.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I've seen it with people imbedding IM capability to other applications.

Re:why?

[erpbridge]

... but do you have a cellphone that works with any telco's subscribers, and has Gaim installed?

Re:why?

[cronot]

Agreed, for the most part. Though I think you and most people replying to the grandparent missed the point when he told about writing your own IM client, but that's not important anyway, so I'll leave that aside to address an important point you raised.

If Google is going to get their IM network to take off, it's going to take something about existing IM networks that can similarly simultaneously annoy you and all your friends into switching. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but it'll probably have to be something stronger than the lure of having everyone code their own client.

Actually the top IMs out there doesn't have too many differences between them. They all allow Instant Messaging (duh), some kind of control of contact lists, File transfers, etc. Some 2 or 3 allow voice or video chat. MSN is one of those, I think Yahoo does that too. I don't know about Yahoo users (don't use for a long time now), but as for MSN users (at least the ones I know), they tend to praise Video/Voice chat as a great feature (to which I disagree - read below), along with other eye-candies - "skinned visual", avatars, etc. So, I think that the big "selling" point is Video/Voice chat, that's pretty much the only thing that would be missing on a Jabber-compliant IM, but then, adding this to an IM client would be (IMHO) bloat, as voice and/or video chat is supposed to be a job for another app (e.g. Skype, Netmetting (does that still exists?), etc.), not part of the IM Client (you know, "keep it simple"). A better solution would be to easily integrate the IM client to those kind of programs.

Then you'd have the user base. Google has it's name, so this alone should help some. If Google choose to really use Jabber, then there will be interoperability between other IM protocols. Last time I checked, Jabber supports interoperability between ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and maybe others I don't remember. And the neat thing is that this happens at the server-side, with server transports. That means that if Yahoo changes its protocols, users don't have to update their IM clients, just the Yahoo transport on the server needs to be updated, and the users can access Yahoo again without the need to do anything. Granted, the server transports offer limited interoperability between the various protocols, but then, this is intented to be a migration tool, not a full compatibility layer.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a G-Point? Perhaps that's why you can't find it.

Re:why?

[Doug Neal]

I don't think they'd care, seeing as 99% (at least) of users would be using their client. This is just about proven by the fact that Microsoft aren't that fussed about third party MSN Messenger clients - it just means more people using MSN, which works out well for them.

Re:why?

[Jedi Alec]

considering some of the conversation people(not me ofc, no way...) have over IM this might not be a feature suitable for a work environment :)

Re:why?

[Sunnan]

One of the reasons we use GNU/Linux/BSD/etc is because it's easier to program (including shell scripts) than Windows traditionally.

The shell in Windows sucked a couple of years ago (it might still - haven't used it).

And what the grandparent says:

"Likewise, if there's a protocol, the applications are easier to write and more people can make them!"

is true.

Jabber is great; there are lots of innovative stuff popping up.

Re:why?

[Hestas Coyote]

I use Gaim when using a Linux-based computer - with over 512mb RAM on my Windows machine, I have no problems in running MSN, Aol Messenger, and IRC with no noticable performance drop - and therefore Gaim (the Windows version) would be a poor alternative in my eyes. For the record, I have no problems in using a Jabber-based IM, or one which supports all protocols - but the implementation must be better and accessible to the entire internet population than Gaim currently is.

Not to start a war here or anything, but you must be using an old version on Gaim for windows. Current version, unless I misunderstand your intention, does every thing you want. I use the linux version of Gaim at home, but always install the windows version on any windows PC I have to do work on. Other than slight differences, to me they are now exactly the same from either linux or windows. Oh, and I'm only unofficially with Gaim. ;)

Re:why?

[MyDixieWrecked]

The issue with logs and all that is why I propose someone makes an opensource AIM daemon. Not one to replace AIM's server, but one to serve as a middleman...

You can set what server your AIM client connects to, so why not have a daemon running on yer home server that keeps you connected when yer not really on, then just login to home when you want to chat... it can log all of your messages in a central location and send you missed messages when you log in.

add a sql server to that to do log queries through a "SysOp" screenname, and it makes it even better...

I've got a lot of this thing planned out in my head, but don't have enough experience programming threads and sockets in anything other than java (blah) to implement it.

Re:why?

[AKAImBatman]

add a sql server to that to do log queries through a "SysOp" screenname, and it makes it even better...

I'm not sure I'd bother with a full blown database. Use a good logging API (like the java.util.logging package), and you should be able to write more than enough information to disk to make parsing easy as pie.

I've got a lot of this thing planned out in my head, but don't have enough experience programming threads and sockets in anything other than java (blah) to implement it.

Uh, that's a REALLY odd thing to say. Java would actually be perfect for this sort of development. Why are you considering other languages?

Re:why?

[FireFury03]

There is no advantage to using one IM service over another, so why anybody switch?

Rubbish. I _hate_ MSN since it assumes that everyone only uses one machine at a time. It can't support multiple logins so I have to remember to log in when I move workstations and I can't use auto-relogin since then the clients war with eachother, repeatedly kicking eachother off. Not using auto-relogin means that I have to remember to manually log back in after the MSN servers (frequently) go down.

The big reason why people won't change is because the networks don't interoperate so if all my friends are on MSN I'm forced to use MSN to talk to them.

Re:why?

[danielsfca2]

> In fact, I really can't think of a single down side to using a webapp for instant messaging.

Ok. I'll help you:

- I don't want a damn browser running all the time just to have access to IM!
- I don't want to have to be online just to review a chat log!
- Either "A," "B," or "C" below:
--A. On MSIE/Win, every time MSIE crashes, I'd prefer it not take down my IM client too. And vice versa.
--B. On non-msie/Win, I'd like to have a notification icon in the "tray."
--C. On my Mac, I'd prefer the IM client have its own Dock icon rather than being yet another browser window. I'd also like a menu-bar extra (similar to MS "tray" icons).
- I'd like sound notifications, and little temporary pop-up notifications. And not little browser popups. How are you going to handle notifications? Just to get sound, you'd need to be running a damn plugin or FLASH just to provide a sound notification! Holy bloat, batman!
- Maybe I'd like to run a script locally when a certain contact signs on. How could you securely implement a browser-based IM client that could do that?
- The same reason I hate the webmail-as-the-only-interface-to-email trend--I don't want to have to load a bunch of redundant and inefficient HTML and ads for every single message I open, every time I look back at the inbox. But change "message I open" to "message I send or receive."
- Maybe I'd like audio and video chat. No, WITHOUT a bunch of unreliable and highly unstable browser "plugins" or ActiveX controls.
- One refresh of the buddy-list window goes bad and you're looking at an error message in your buddy-list window instead of an IM client. A real client can continue trying to reconnect.
- Unlike e-mail, IM requires lots of dynamic-ness. So you can guarantee yourself that if ANYONE implements a web-based, feature-rich IM client, it'll be highly proprietary. Read "highly-IE-only."
- And if you're going to use Java to do achieve some of those aims without stooping to stupid ActiveX, IE lock-in, etc? Why not just offer it as a normal executable too then?

> Personally, I don't mind that. At least I'd know that ALL settings and history are saved between machines instead of the classic issue

Whoa there, two very different ideas here:
Storing contacts and settings on the server (like Jabber does): Good. I'm all for it.
Making the interface server-side and translating it to HTML, and making that the only interface to the service: Very, very bad.
You don't need to do the latter to accomplish the former.

Re:why?

[FireFury03]

- Lightwait protocol (especially when idle)

MSN uses about 3 times the bandwidth as Jabber when idle (in my experience). When you're paying for GPRS bandwidth this is significant when considering if you want to leave it running all the time

Re:why?

[MyDixieWrecked]

I've written small servers in java before, and they always got really unreliable after about 2-3 days of running. If I restarted the program, it'd work fine. That's unacceptable.

I'd much rather write this thing in C, or maybe even objC, since I feel like I have a lot more control over everything.

anyway, I need something to search through my logs faster. I'm getting tired of having to jump to the console and do a "cat * | grep what I am looking for"

When you've got 75MB of chat logs in thousands of files, that can take a bit of time.

Re:why?

[N7DR]

How many people do you know who are running IM clients they've written themselves?

I do

Me too. I have found it a very useful ability for applications to use jabber to report their status to me. If, for example, one of my VPN connections goes down, I know about it immediately even if I am not using that connection at the time, because I get a jabber message telling me so. That's just one example of several applications for which I use jabber-based status reporting.

(And because it's presence-based, the message gets to me wherever I happen to be physically located, which is also kind of neat.)

Re:why?

[AKAImBatman]

I've written small servers in java before, and they always got really unreliable after about 2-3 days of running. If I restarted the program, it'd work fine

Then you did something wrong. There's nothing inherent in Java that causes it to be unstable. It's possible you were leaking threads or objects in your program, and that's what caused you problems. I can almost guarantee that you'll run into the same issue with a server written in any other language. C/C++ would be particularly bad, because memory can leak in ways that are nearly undetectable.

If you have an example of a small server, feel free to mail it to me. I'll take a look at it and see if I can spot the problem.

anyway, I need something to search through my logs faster. I'm getting tired of having to jump to the console and do a "cat * | grep what I am looking for"

When you've got 75MB of chat logs in thousands of files, that can take a bit of time.

Fair enough. I still think SQL Server is an overkill, but to each their own. In case you're interestedd, here's a small SQL engine that can be easily embedded into your program.

Re:why?

[MyDixieWrecked]

I'll send out that program when I get home from work. It's extremely simple, but it listens on UDP and TCP for connections. It's a tracker server from the great Hotline software suite. I wrote it the weekend I learned java about 3 years ago...

It's also possible that the version of java from back then (1.3.x? 1.4.x? I don't remember) was less stable than what's out now. I'm not familiar with J2EE, either...

besides, isn't the whole purpose of OSS to have feature overkill. I mean, I see SQL support in everything nowadays...

Re:why?

[jjsoh]

I know it's funny, but it's true. That was the only way I could get my wife to switch IM clients by showing her the better (animated) emoticons of Yahoo Messenger. She absolutely loves them, and couldn't care for the ugly emoticons of AIM or MSN Messenger (even though the lastest version of MSN does allow you to modify your own emoticons, it's too much of a bother, especially since they don't follow you when you sign in another workstation).

I'm just glad I was able to get her off AIM. I hated that client. At least Yahoo allows you to modify the interface and buddy list to only display a bare minimal amount of buttons and features, if you wanted to configure it that way.

Re:why?

[name773]

that's all good, but does it automatically refresh? that takes up bandwidth and looks choppy, and if it doesn't, it's hard to use... web frontends were not designed to do this.

unless, of course, you found a different way to do this with php, in which case, please let me know :)

and GNUStep r0cks :)

Re:why?

[TheRaven64]

If you turn off the setting that kills PHP scripts that have been running for more than 30 seconds, then you can just leave the http connection open and keep spitting messages down it. You then have a separate frame for the message box for outgoing messages. I did, however, use refreshes for the roster. It wasn't pretty, but it did let me use Jabber while I was living behind a firewall that blocked almost everything other than http / https.

Re:why?

[natrik]

FYI:

try installing GAIM without WIMP or any of the other GTK themes. It runs much better that way.

Re:why?

[Breakfast Pants]

Whats your point? You can write a little proxy script that drops all the advertisements in gmail right now. I just don't see.. whats your point?

Re:why?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

See what I mean?

Re:why?

[Ryosen]

You don't even need those. Simply add the following line to your hosts files:

127.0.0.1 ar.atwola.com

ar.atwola.com is the adserver for aol's IM. I have not had a single ad since I added this to my hosts file. I was actually fine with the ads in IM until they started doing video ads (movie trailers, mostly). Pissed me off. I'm hacking away on some code at 2am and all of a sudden my rig starts blathering on about the love affair of the century (Gigli) or some such nonsense. Needless to say, I pulled the plug.

Finally

[WALoeIII]

Finally a service that would focus on the messaging, not on locking people out.

Re:Finally

[Curtman]

Amen to that. They need to get GMail out of beta first though, this invite crap has to go.

AIM, isn't bad at all these days. It's Yahoo and MSN the big offenders. Yahoo for blocking clients, and MSN for just going down way too often. And ICQ which AOL took over some time ago and ran into the ground is due for a good death blow.

Re:Finally

[Dorothy 86]

this invite crap has to go.

it's not that big of a deal... seriously... almost everything beta is invite only.. they are working on features... it's still beta... it's not all that amazing that it's invite only.

just wait... it will come out. in the mean time, who wants these invites? i've got 3.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

wolven_wraith (at) yahoo (dot) com

Send me one!

Re:Finally

[Curtman]

Meanwhile... GMail is quickly becoming like Hotmail is now where it takes 20 or so tries to get a username. By the time your average person can sign up, they won't bother, because Hotmail's storage will be 2GBs, and "integrated" into their desktop and instant messenger.

Re:Finally

[atriusofbricia]

I'll take an invite ;) heheheh

Re:Finally

[Curtman]

I'd give you one if I had one. I just got mine the other day, by bitching on Slashdot, seems to be about the only way. And probably the reason they are doing it, great free publicity.

Re:Finally

[atriusofbricia]

These things do happen from time to time...

Re:Finally

[inkedmn]

I've got *several* invites, email me (inkedmn@gmail.com) w/ your name and email addy if you want one.

Re:Finally

[iMMersE]

If you're the first person to click on this :

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-df540b7d41-0abe57b 1d5-67b0c88cb5

Then you'll have a gmail account ...

Re:Finally

[dossen]

Thanks.

Re:Finally

[iMMersE]

No problem, enjoy it.

ICQ

[Free Bird]

I still fail to see what's wrong with ICQ, except for the fact that all !geek people have stopped using it...
Ah, to think of the time when everybody who used any IM program used ICQ. Those were the days...

Re:ICQ

[floridagators1]

I find it funny how on message board signups and all, they still ask for an ICQ number. It makes me want to cry. Long gone are the glory days of ICQ

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

We live in a world of fads and ICQ was a fad. When the early adopters started gloating about their low low ICQ #'s it got on some people's nerves and it just started to go away.

That said, I never used ICQ. The fact that you needed to actually have a # to chat with someone was insanely stupid. AIM and MSN caught on because remembering "sexylady69" was easier than remember "42542432". What if I confused her for "KolageLezBian"... man I would have been fucked.

Re:ICQ

[ejaw5]

Hey, this what's your ICQ#?

57007188888

How about yours?

16085588888

Re:ICQ

[Scoria]

Any version beyond "ICQ98" was extremely bloated, and those who weren't offended by the bloat were offended by the presence of AOL, who had acquired ICQ and was attempting to deprecate it in favor of AIM. Many of us can also recall the blatant security vulnerabilities inherent to the ICQ protocol, including "ICQ identity theft," which was somewhat commonplace around 1999.

Re:ICQ

[satoshi1]

You could have nicknames in ICQ, and you could search by nicknames to find someone. So, even if "sexylady69" turned up a few results, it shouldn't be too bad.

Re:ICQ

[Cochonou]

You could just search people by email.
By the way, beware: I think sexylady69 is nothing more than a spambot.

Re:ICQ

[Malc]

ICQ? Listen here kiddo, I'm still upset by these upstart juniors using ntalk and ytalk!

Re:ICQ

[FLEB]

There's that, plus the fact that ICQ was the first wide-scale IM client. Unfortunately, it died a death of bloat. The fact that it had a hundred memory-gobbling, lag inducing, epileptically flashing "features" was probably a larger nail in its coffin than the inconvenience of ICQ numbers.

I was a fan of ICQ up until v2000. It had a lot more useful features, and a History mechanism that couldn't be beat. Then, they dropped the good logging mechanism and started adding a whole bunch of useless "search bar" type of garbage that just slowed the program up.

Luckily, that's when Trillian started to hit the scene. The funny thing is, I have Trillian Pro, and it's loaded up with plugins like an RSS reader and all kinds of search crap... but it's less intrusive and more integrated, and I find it to be a benefit.

Hopefully now, if Google IM takes off, Trillian will start supporting Jabber natively (instead of via a plugin).

Re:ICQ

[Malc]

"When the early adopters started gloating about their low low ICQ #'s it got on some people's nerves"

It's okay you don't need to post anonymously, I really won't look down my nose at you and your high /. UID. I promise. Honestly. >-)

Re:ICQ

[Solosoft]

You know what made ICQ ? The search. ICQ has / had an AMAZING search. You wanted to find someone all you had to do is look. There e-mail name etc etc. I think it's the spam that hit people HARD. I remember connecting and constantly getting those "forward this to everyone thing" and later on even like spam spam. "Click here for hot girls" etc etc.

Your comment on not remembering ICQ is quite strange. EVERY time I bring up ICQ everyone remembers there number. I know mine is 26262929 (lucked out on that one). It's a simple string of numbers that most people can remember.

By the time ICQ had server side lists, and supported firewalls as mentioned above. MSN and AIM kicked in.

I know in norhtern ontario the thing to use is MSN. Everyone and there dog has a MSN account and uses it to chat. I know noone that I physicaly meet who use AIM or ICQ or even yahoo in that matter.

Most of the convienece is hotmail. Most people and there dog have a hotmail account. Why not simply sign in with MSN and boom your hotmail is all nice and simple with a messaging app.

Don't want to have a hotmail account. Click Here and simply add your e-mail address (They just simply mail you a URL to click). Then sign onto MSN with your new mail address.

Yahoo I find isn't a very nice network to talk with. It's too bloated on the windows end and looks to be a haven for "picking up". If you want a laugh go on one of the romance channels and say your 19/F/Wherever and you get literally enough msg's for yahoo to boot you off. AIM is ... AIM it seems popular in the US but I don't know since im canadian.

Too bad for ICQ but people moved on

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, the word you need is "their". The word "there" refers to a place.

Re:ICQ

[Radix37]

I've just had to dump the icq client, because they no longer allow connections from version 2000a. I had hacked the ads out of that version so it was quite nice, and later versions would randomly eat messages from people not on my list with no explanation (i didn't have any censors or ignore lists), so now I use trillian to connect.

Re:ICQ

[PitaBred]

I remember getting hit by that because I had a pretty low number. I just said "fuck it" to the service after that.

Re:ICQ

[ThogScully]

I never really heard about identity theft on ICQ - never really looked into it.... but that explains why I lost my really low UID there... The username and password were just different all of a sudden one day.

I did signup for a new one but never told anyone I knew about it, so essentially I didn't use ICQ anymore.
-N

Re:ICQ

[robochan]

So?
Are they going to run out of numbers or something?

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that they're fucking impossible to remember. Pull your head out of your ass and recognize, asshat.

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

"That said, I never used ICQ. The fact that you needed to actually have a # to chat with someone was insanely stupid. AIM and MSN caught on because remembering "sexylady69" was easier than remember "42542432". What if I confused her for "KolageLezBian"... man I would have been fucked."

That's also why phones never caught on.

Re:ICQ

[Curtman]

For one thing, they refuse to help you if your account is compromised. My UIN was stolen a few years back. The ass who took it, spent a few weeks trying to gain information about me from my contacts. The exact same thing happened to a friend of mine a few days before me, and neither of us can even get so much as a response from anyone at AOL. At the time my UIN was listed on some Russian page offering stolen UIN's for sale. You would think that would be something AOL might want to put a stop to since it only makes them look bad. If an 8 character (max they allow) alpha numeric password isn't good enough to prevent that, then at least pay attention to people when they come looking for help. And before anyone mentions the password retrieval thing - according to it, my email address was set before there was a retrieval service so it cannot be used.

Re:ICQ

[Our Man In Redmond]

Hey, this what's your ICQ#?

57007188888

How about yours?

16085588888

Funny, you don't look Jewish.

Re:ICQ

[thephotoman]

Gaim does that much already. It even preserves the protocol smilies...and it's all free.

Re:ICQ

[tzanger]

It's okay you don't need to post anonymously, I really won't look down my nose at you and your high /. UID. I promise. Honestly. >-)

And your point is, #1751...??? :-)

... now I'm waiting for unitrode to post and put *me* in my place... :-)

Re:ICQ

[michrech]

I just went to www.icq.com and searched for my number -- 12789908. It's still there! =] I even updated it's profile, though I won't use ICQ anymore. The reason I stopped was because of all the "hot girls here" and other messages I'm not interested in.. (Now, if it said "Hot guys here", well.. errr.. ne'er mind...)

Anyway.. I use Yahoo! to talk with a couple friends that hate anything MS, and MSN Messenger for every member of my family, a couple co-workers, and some friends.. =]

Re:ICQ

[Saeger]

# write malc
screw you hippie! get off my mainframe!^D
# cat /dev/urandom >/dev/ttyp3 &

--

Re:ICQ

[slungsolow]

Phones are in a way a different beast. Phone #'s rely on area codes and assigned prefixes. If I was calling my best friend who lived down the block, I only had to know the last 4 digits of his #, since the majority of prefixes in the area were 342, 343, 344, 346, etc..

ICQ #'s were assigned to you based upon you creation time. They are definitly a bit more confusing than the well structured phone, IP or zip code systems.

Re:ICQ

[wolrahnaes]

I live in an area with multiple area codes overlapping eachother. I have friends in quite a few exchanges, so I have to remember all 10 digits.

Compare this to my 9 digit ICQ number, and your point is toast.

I do agree with the other posters that AOL destroyed the mainline ICQ client with feature bloat. They seemed to be using ICQ as a beta for the stuff they would eventually put in AIM.

I use Trillian Pro 2.013 now, and still regularly chat on ICQ. I have one friend who only uses ICQ, and two more who have both ICQ and AIM. We use AIM normally, but ICQ is a great answering machine. Offline IM = great idea

If only I still had my first ICQ account. It was in the 6 digit range IIRC

Re:ICQ

[wolrahnaes]

It's all a matter of how often you use them, just like anything else.

I remember the ICQ #s of myself and one of my friends who joined about the same time as I re-joined. I can rarely remember my own phone number.

Re:ICQ

[MasterSLATE]

i got two 7-digit icq numbers, one in the 4 mil and one in the 1 mil ranges. Wanna buy one? Or are they not as "cool" as gmail invites?

Re:ICQ

[vinlud]

One way to do that was by searching for ICQ numbers with outdated hotmailaccounts as primary emailaddress. You would then register the emailaddress again and let ICQ email the password.

You also had programs which were sent to unsuspected users as personal photo's, disguised as an image name with a lot of spaces after that. The user would click to open it and run the program, thus sending his personal info.

Re:ICQ

[Tony Hoyle]

What if I confused her for "KolageLezBian"... man I would have been fucked.

Well, with any luck....

Re:ICQ

[dk.r*nger]

Hey, this what's your ICQ#?
57007188888
How about yours?
16085588888

[on the phone]Yes, with a p, not a b.... P!.. no, there's a dash.. right.. .. no, capitalisation doesn't matter .. no .. ok, then, a capital P, right .. yes, dot net, .. n-e-t.. no, not dot net dot com, just dot net.

arrrrrrrg

Re:ICQ

[dnoyeb]

me 2. but my number was stolen through the lax security of Yahoo mail which i had switched my email address too.

yahoo nor icq could give a rats ass either, and they both threatened me and told me not to mail them. Rude loosers. Thats when I stopped using it.

Re:ICQ

[Red Alastor]

That's why the default for finding people was "search by email".

Re:ICQ

[aggiefalcon01]

Your comment on not remembering ICQ is quite strange. EVERY time I bring up ICQ everyone remembers there number.

I don't remember MY number. Hell, I don't even remember my ICQ password, it's been so long! So I couldn't use it if I wanted to, anymore ...

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

--writing 101--

there = indicates place
their = indicates possession

I almost think you could be an AOL user because 'their' understanding of basic english is abhorrible.

Re:ICQ

[mykdavies]

How low can we go before those snooty 3-digit guys show up?

Re:ICQ

[lucas teh geek]

i can relate to this. I've had the same UIN for about 7-8 years and in that time ive had maybe 6-7 different home phone numbers. I dont bother learning phone numbers any more, i just keep them all stored in my mobile.

Re:ICQ

[sql*kitten]

And your point is, #1751...??? :-)

Kids these days...

Re:ICQ

[slungsolow]

I live in an area with multiple area codes overlapping eachother. I have friends in quite a few exchanges, so I have to remember all 10 digits.

You make a great point, and what you are saying is completely understandable. I live in the DC Metro area and I have deal with at least 6 area codes on a daily basis. But, my point is still valid in that the numbers still have some kind of structure to them, as they are not only all 10 digit numbers, but they follow a set method of creation. They all have to be within an predetermined area code, and beyond that they all have to fall into a set prefix.

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

3 digits? No, I think as some sort of freak occurrence Number 1 will reply just to spite us all.

Re:ICQ

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could remember my first one. it was in the 100k range. My second one(and the one I still use) is 205xxx

Re:ICQ

[smooth wombat]

There's that, plus the fact that ICQ was the first wide-scale IM client.

Maybe I'm mistaken but wouldn't mIRC have been the first widespread IM client? I know I was using it before ICQ was out and IRC was certainly around since basically the beginning of 'The Web'.

Re:ICQ

[FLEB]

IRC was around, but it was more of a room-based as opposed to person-to-person-centric system. Sure, you had notify lists and the like, but it wasn't centered around that nearly as much as IM.

Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll run into the same problem as all other new and supposedly better IM protocols -- "all my friends are on [AIM|ICQ|MSN|...] so I use that".

Re:Don't think so

[rowdent]

Well, considering how many people dropped Hotmail like a bad habit as soon as gmail came out, I think that there's a good change a Google IM program might have the same effect.

Re:Don't think so

[justkarl]

Well, considering how many people dropped Hotmail like a bad habit as soon as gmail came out, I think that there's a good change a Google IM program might have the same effect.

Funny, I always thought Hotmail was a bad habit...
But really. I think it's safe to say that everything that is google is not neccecarily great. To me, this looks like a ploy to sell stock.

Re:Don't think so

[Lord Kano]

Well, considering how many people dropped Hotmail like a bad habit as soon as gmail came out, I think that there's a good change a Google IM program might have the same effect.

Gmail didn't come out yet. It's still a preview release.

LK

Re:Don't think so

[AlphaJoe]

I use Trillian, so it doesn't matter to me what service they use. If google does an IM service, it won't take long to get a plugin to allow my client to talk to it.

Re:Don't think so

[Rallion]

I'll just pretend GMail is actually out for this post.

It's not the same thing at all. E-mail is all interoperable. Different mail services are like different IM clients, not like different IM networks. Being one of the few users of an email provider has a certain appeal to most people. However, with an IM service, it's useless unless other people are using it too.

Re:Don't think so

[EvanED]

"Well, considering how many people dropped Hotmail like a bad habit as soon as gmail came out, I think that there's a good change a Google IM program might have the same effect."

On the other hand, dropping Hotmail just involves telling everyone your new email address. Not necessarily a trivial task, but they can still talk to you.

If people are to change to another IM protocol, it will very possibly have to be able to talk to AIM at least to start. Otherwise it'll be difficult to get the critical mass of people to transfer.

In short:
Change of email is a personal decision; you don't need to force others to change with you.
Change of IM is the opposite; for the most part, for other people to talk to you, they need to change too.

Re:Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I would drop hotmail like a bad habit if I could actually get a gmail account! Howse about sendin' me an invite?

Re:Don't think so

[Kethinov]

It'll run into the same problem as all other new and supposedly better IM protocols -- "all my friends are on [AIM|ICQ|MSN|...] so I use that".

If your Jabber server is configured properly, you can use Jabber to talk to any AIM/ICQ/MSN/whatever user.

Re:Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, as a slashdotter, I don't have that problem... mostly because I don't have any friends!

Re:Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially today, with GMail going offline part of the day and being unavailable. Maybe they needed to remind us it was only beta.

Re:Don't think so

[EvilSporkMan]

Jabber CAN talk to AIM.

Re:Don't think so

[OneBarG]

And if they actually use Jabber, there already is a plugin to connect.

Re:Don't think so

[EvanED]

... if Google can stay ahead of AOL in closing off the gateways. You can be sure AOL won't take too kindly to that.

Re:Don't think so

[j3110]

I use Jabber for Yahoo, MSN, and AIM.

I know a lot of people run Trillian, GAIM, etc. as well.

My only point is to say that it's not either/or. If google pushes underpants, I would try them. If enough people give it a try, and they have enough cool features like GMail, they will stay. Searching your old IM's is a nice way to start.

So... I think there's always room for one more IM protocol. The only reason AIM is big is because Grandma uses AOL, and thinks that AIM is IM. I think grandma knows how to google too. :)

Re:Don't think so

[wolrahnaes]

OK, I'm bored and have some invites, so first two responses get them.

Re:Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

send mine to cgaribay@hotmail.com

Re:Don't think so

[metamatic]

Google have the tech know-how to run a Jabber server with the AIM and MSN gateways for legacy compatibility.

Re:Don't think so

[subsentio]

So how many people did drop Hotmail for Gmail? I haven't seen any numbers anywhere. But it sounds like you have and I'm really curious.

Re:Don't think so

[wolrahnaes]

Done

Re:Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont know about aim, but atleast the *connect to messenger.hotmail.com* feature is pretty hardcoded into the offical msn client.

Re:Don't think so

[Donny Smith]

Well Real Networks have the know-how to play iPod's tunes, but it doesn't mean they can't get cut off any time - they are at complete mercy of Apple.

Once your messenger starts getting cut off twice a month, you'll get fed up with that bullshit.
At least that's why I abandoned Gaim.

Re:Don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

gmailinvite@liquidsky.se if you still have one.. thanks

(at work, therefore ac)

Re:Don't think so

[TheRaven64]

If your Jabber server is configured properly, you can use Jabber to talk to any AIM/ICQ/MSN/whatever user. If Google's Jabber server is configured properly then AIM/ICQ/MSN/Whatever will block their IP. For this to work, they need to get other people running large Jabber servers (Apple, perhaps, since it looks as though the next version of iChat will have full Jabber support) so that they can approach other IM companies from the position of a large user base.

Re:Don't think so

[Kru)(fen]

One point everybody seems to be missing is that, if Google wants to, they can add Yahoo, AOL, ICQ, MSN compatibility through their Jabber server. Jabber servers can have modules installed on them so that the user can log to multiple other networks through that server. So, you could migrate and wait for your friends once you are already there.

By doing this, and having a strong feature set, they will most likely conquer users in the long run. I love google, I love gmail, and, if they come up with a cross-platform, server-side stored history/contacts, and multiple-IM 'proxying' Jabber server, I will be the first to migrate.

One more thing though: today, everybody (but me, it seems) wants audio chat and webcam. If they don't have a solution for that, don't even bother. That is a major advantage of MSN over ICQ today. People just point-and-click, and it is there. I don't like that, but, well, this is how it works...

Re:Don't think so

[lachlan76]

I'm here.......and at 95%.

If you have one....please, anyone....I'm at 95% here.

Please give generously to the guys with limited email space ;)

Re:Don't think so

[bedessen]

There have been third party AIM/MSN/ICQ clients for years, such as Gaim, Miranda, and Trillian. If the rest of the world shared the same gripe about the crappy UI that the author of this article had, then wouldn't you expect use of those programs to dwarf use of the "official" clients? Yet I'd be surprised if their use registers in the double-digits percentage wise.

This article is one of the more logically inconsistent and poorly thought out ones I've seen posted to slashdot in a long time. The author starts out with a screed about how bad the official AIM client is. He then uses that to suggest that the protocol needs to be changed to Jabber. Hello? Someone doesn't understand the difference between the CLIENT implementation and the PROTOCOL implementation. You can use Trillian to AIM/ICQ/MSN/YIM all day long with none of the ridiculous complaints the author has. "Oh no, an ad and large toolbar buttons!" Christ, get a different client. But don't condemn the whole protocol because of a bad implementation. If by some stroke of magic Jabber became popular, you can bet the big boys would make a Jabber client with ads and games and stupid toolbars also.

The author then goes on to make some ill-formed conclusion that somehow Google would have anything to do with this. The fact is that these days the IM field is pretty mature, and there are already too many large players. Yet another company asking users to switch to another IM program is going to be a hard sell. People have been offering new protocols like Jabber for years, as well as replacement clients like Trillian for existing protocols -- and yet everyone still uses the crappy mainline versions with ads and distractions and bloat. When it comes to software and web companies, it's really hard to get much bigger than Microsoft/MSN, Yahoo, and AOL. They have the marketing budget and mindspace to get people to run their clients. Google may be big but it's not a deity, it cannot expect to cause everyone to switch without resorting to underhand tactics like installing its software without permission or making deals to bundle it with Windows. I don't see how Google would have any chance of doing anything about the IM landscape.

Wha?

[hexghost]

Interesting, but I don't see how Google would do it without a large amount of time. Trying to convince people like my little sister to give up her little world of AIM for something entirely new for no real benefit would be really difficult.

Re:Wha?

[bs_testability]

wouldn't she be excited to change once she hears that a bot will be monitoring the conversation in order to place context sensive ads in the margin?

Re:Wha?

[Scaba]

I'm just guessing, but Google would probably offer the ability to connect to the other four major services through their client, ala Kopete|Gaim|Trillian. I think the Jabber protocol supports this. And if they use Qt, they could simultaneously release Linux, win32 and OSX clients. (I know they could use Gtk, but why torture us?)

Re:Wha?

[TheKubrix]

Thats ignorant. How do you think Google even came into existence? Were they there when the Internet first opened up to the mainstream public? No. We had crap like Webcrawler, Yahoo, and eventually Altavista. And then out of no where a company delivered to the unwashed masses an engine that was perfect in every which way, and now they DOMINATE. So back then, a couple college kids went up against the big boys, and they won. And now that they have significant capitol, waging war in a medium where all the current competitors truly suck, this is the PERFECT opportunity to enter...

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they use Qt, they could simultaneously release Linux, win32 and OSX clients. (I know they could use Gtk, but why torture us?)

Boy, and here I was wondering what we'd discuss about what some guy thinks Google might do! Do you think they should write the code in vi or Emacs?

Re:Wha?

[The Kow]

Big difference between a search protocol, which is a value entirely based on the server-client relationship, and a messenger system, in which the client experience is directly related to the amount of fellow clients. My guess is you either use an omni-client of some sort, or you don't use Instant Messaging at all, or this would seem a lot more like common sense. Try talking a friend who uses MSN into switching over to AIM, even though all their friends use MSN too (or vice versa). Or even try convincing them to use an omni-client - see if they really want to put up with configuring it for each protocol they want to use, etc.

I shouldn't have to disclaim this, but just in case, let me remind most of the people using Instant Messaging services are entry-level computer users. They dislike 'options' menus, as is their right.

Re:Wha?

[Matt Perry]

I'm just guessing, but Google would probably offer the ability to connect to the other four major services through their client, ala Kopete|Gaim|Trillian. I think the Jabber protocol supports this.

Jabber does support that but on the server side. That means if AOL, MSN, etc want to block Google IM clients from using their networks, they just have to block Google's Jabber servers rather than try and change their protocols.

Re:Wha?

[Thomas Charron]

You mean, like AIM already DOES?

AOL does indeed do something simular to this, no lie. But the ad companies use and read cookies that are placed by AIM itself..

Re:Wha?

[shut_up_man]

I suspect that Google would go a different, more powerful path, which is to support a Jabber-MSN / Jabber-ICQ / Jabber-Yahoo gateway at the server level. Then users could send a Joogle IM to user@yahoo.com and it would just work, like email.

I believe this was spottily supported in Jabber servers, but was always being broken by changes to protocols, etc. Still, it would be cool if Google bought a company like say, Trillian, and used their expertise. They might even call the client Grillian.

Re:Wha?

[Szentigrade]

G-AIM conversation sassygirl23:OMG i cant believe you like arnold, hes sooo hot!!! Daddyslilgurl47: Yeah i no can you ask him out for me?!?! G-AIM Advertisement: Sassygirl123:i Dont think i i like arnold anymore

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

..a bot will be monitoring the conversation..

Since when did Google develop fully seniant bots? A bot can't monitor anything. It can search through a stream of bytes looking to match another stream of bytes, but that's it.

People getting all heated about Google "monitoring" email is a good laugh, and maybe two or three years ago I would have been surpised to hear someone talking such idiotic nonsense on Slashdot, but these days there seem to be a lot of lamers on Slashdot like yourself who can't follow a simple technical discussion without your eyes glazing over and the drool begining to drip from your over-sized mouth.

In future, just let the grownups worry about your email. You just write little email and click the shiny "Send" button, O.K?

Re:Wha?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Trying to convince people like my little sister to give up her little world of AIM for something entirely new for no real benefit would be really difficult.

I suppose a good number of people will run both clients in parallel for a while. Then, if more and more people choose Google IM and don't bother to fire up the other client anymore, others will see a shrinking list of on-line contacts on the old client and drop it as well.

It depends of course on how well Google's client will measure up:
- It better have a 'G' in front of the name... instant street cred.
- They will probably get the user interface right like they have in the past: lightweight, intuitive, attractive, instead of the bloated, confusing and fugly interface of ICQ.
- I wonder if they will allow other clients to connect... not so much to replace the Google client, but to allow people to develop clients for platforms they might not have thought of... oddball operating systems, PDA's, mobile phones, or even Perl scripts running on webservers. People have done all this with ICQ and MSN, but it is really tiring to try and keep up with ever-changing protocols and operators trying to lock you out.
- Oh and Google... please please please include off-line messaging like ICQ, instead of diverting to email. I want ONE client on which to receive messages, offine or online.

Personally, I think the world has been waiting for IM done right. Google is large and clever enough to provide enough initial momentum to their IM effort, and they have a good track record when it comes to usability.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the portals want to open up to competition? If google hacked the protocols they'd open themselves up to litigation from their competitors.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Notepad > all. I just want to use the arrow keys!

Re:Wha?

[aardvarkjoe]

- It better have a 'G' in front of the name... instant street cred.

I don't think that "Gim" is going to fly -- I failed it in high school, and don't want any more to do with it.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

I shudder to think how much the google adlinks for IM are going to cost if you wanted to buy ads on "LOL" and "OMG"

Re:Wha?

[DashEvil]

Or, even better yet, they could just use wxwidgets.

Re:Wha?

[duffbeer703]

They also could use J2EE entitiy beans to feed the data to a Perl/Tk script.

Re:Wha?

[Rytsarsky]

But you can use 'transports' (aka gateways) on jabber servers other than the one you are registered with... eg- I use jabber.org as my primary jabber server, but connect to aim, msn, y! and icq through myjabber.net and irc through jabber.org.uk (it's the only one I've found that actually works). In other words, you don't have to use google's transports (they probably wouldn't have them anyway) to connect to the other services.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

(I know they could use Gtk, but why torture us?)

Torture how? By offering a clean, usable interface instead of a bloated, flashy one?

Re:Wha?

[sewagemaster]

They will probably get the user interface right like they have in the past: lightweight, intuitive, attractive, instead of the bloated, confusing and fugly interface of ICQ.

you should consider licq for linux. the best icq client on ANY platform bar none :)

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats ignorant.

Thank you for reminding me of the Michael Jackson episode of South Park.

Re:Wha?

[Wakkow]

Can I have the Pro version of Gim called gimp? I hear it also doubles as a photo editing program.

Re:Wha?

[dheltzel]

No, no, no. Not "Gim", it will be called "Gaim".
Much catchier, It think.

Oh, wait. Maybe not.

Re:Wha?

[Nykon]

you do realize there is a slightly more power language available made for cross platform release right? A little language called JAVA, you may have heard of it?

Re:Wha?

[gnu-generation-one]

"It better have a 'G' in front of the name... instant street cred."

Google Instant Messenger Protocol?

IM's

[Egonis]

I used to be a hardcore ICQ User (still have it installed with a few contacts now)... but the mass public moved to MSN all of a sudden -- is this in part to the fact that Microsoft shoved it down our throats?

ICQ can do offline messaging, which MSN can't without an annoying add-in installed.

ICQ can do SMS, so can MSN now, but with another add-in... this is all previously achieved technology.

I welcome the concept of Google making an Instant Messenger, please do! They'd probably do a better job at it without almost nightly downtimes of their servers.

Re:IM's

[LogicX]

I'd like to go further and say that MSN is popular overseas and with lots of foreigners. Majority of americans I know use AIM; but everyone at school whos from India uses MSN like its their job.

Re:IM's

[clmensch]

Who the hell uses MSN? I don't know anyone on MSN. Thank God, too, because that IM client is even worse than AOL's.

Re:IM's

[Coneasfast]

i think it has something to do with the fact that MSN has a 'better looking UI', like those nice lookin smileys. seriously, ICQ has a simple look and people just didn't like it.

this is my theory

Re:IM's

[Anonymous Coward]

When did the public move to MSN? The mass migration I witnessed was from ICQ to AIM after AOL ruined ICQ with ads and bloat so that it was no better than AIM...and AIM accounts are easier to create.

Re:IM's

[liryon]

No one under 18 uses MSN... well if they do they don't talk to anyone. All the kids use AOL and I can't imagine even google changing that.

Re:IM's

[bcmm]

I use MSN instant messaging.
I'm sorry, it's because my friends are on it.
But honestly the client doesn't enter into it. I use Gaim, because the standard client is way too insecure.

I don't know how many people use alternative clients, but i would switch over easily because Gaim already supports Jabber.

Re:IM's

[Anonymous Coward]

people are dumb, msn is simple to setup from a non-technical standpoint.

msn is also easier to find (with IE defaulting to msn.com)

etc.

Re:IM's

[spotter]

I used to think offline messanging was cool. Then I realized I could just use e-mail for it.

i.e. if one has an integrated im/e-mail experience, there's no place for offline IM.

Re:IM's

[Dark Lord Seth]

Here in the Netherlands there was a move to MSN. It is so bad around here the acronym "IM" isn't even used. People just refer to it as MSNing instead of IMing. I think ICQ still hase a very VERY small market share, along with Yahoo messenger. I think dutch people would rather be found dead then found with AIM installed, though.

Don't know why. I use MSN too, I like it's interface. Nice and clean with a little work, compared to either ICQ or Yahoo. Don't know about AIM, but I know 0 people who use AIM so I honestly couldn't care less. Granted, I mainly use MSN because most people I know use it and because it's available by default on every WinXP PC, not for the interface.

Re:IM's

[Kristoffer Lunden]

The only reason I've heard other than "everyone else is doing it" is that it supports webcams in a "just works" way. I'm not interested in seeing who I talk to, so I could care less. But for some, this is apparently important enough to choose IM from.

And yes, I'm sure there are tons of ways getting the cam working on your favourite platform, with your favourite protocol and your favourite client - the point is that MSN just works as soon as you plug it in, it is already up and running (apparently) and it has all those other shiny things too, like cute smileys and round corners.

Personally, I still use ICQ - most people at least use that too, so far noone I want to talk to has been lost this way. ;-) I use SIM as client though. And oh, I do have a jabber account. Apparently noone wants to run jabber though... but if they start to, then I'm already there. ;-)

Re:IM's

[jaxle]

Yea but email is a pita b/c of spam, plus you have to know the persons email. Its easier just having to know one screenname.

Re:IM's

[Feztaa]

I'm in the same boat, basically.

When I was in highschool, everybody who was anybody was on ICQ, then I went to university and everybody had a brand new Dell/Gateway/whatever POS computer with XP preloaded that forced MSN on them, so everybody I knew in university had MSN. I just use Gaim now so that I can talk to all my AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Jabber buddies with one program.

I think a google-branded Jabber client would be a great idea; Jabber would allow them to really innovate quickly and it would be a big push for a good technology.

Re:IM's

[pherthyl]

Simple case of a crappy interface (icq) being trumped by a simple one (MSN). Love it or hate it, the MSN interface is very simple to use, everyone can figure it out. I use a clone of it for linux (aMsn) with a couple more features but still retaining that simple interface.
I used ICQ for years but it always seemed clunky, and had a million features that were useless. ALso MSN was the first with a webcam feature that just worked behind firewalls, and little things like games that people liked to play.
ICQ lost because they were perpetually in beta and even with years head start never managed to make a good client.

Re:IM's

[Rotkiv]

I just skip IM's and use skype. It's MUCH better. although i havn't used it since my HDD fried, and i'm not sure what's new with version 1.0

Re:IM's

[Tim Browse]

Speaking personally, I used to use ICQ, but the interface sucked. Sometimes it seemed like there were no two buttons in the entire interface that were the same height. It looked like a crappy shareware app that had been thrown together.

MSN IM came along with a clean and standard UI, provided a convenient context history for conversations, conversations with multiple participants, and centralised the contact list storage on Microsoft's servers. With ICQ you had to find all your contacts again whenever you reinstalled/used a different machine.

The ICQ interface was just crap crap crap. I'm glad I don't have to use it anymore.

The MSN IM interface is not perfect, but it's way less annoying than ICQ ever was. I found the MSN IM interface cleaner and easier to use than the ICQ one. The day I installed ICQ on a new PC and found that when I typed messages to people each keypress made a noise like a goddamn 1920s typewriter was when I knew it was time to give up on ICQ. Although to be fair, the period when it would silently install a web server on your PC wasn't great either.

That's my theory, anyway.

Re:IM's

[Erik Hensema]

The popularity of IM protocols seems to be geographically determined, and a bit demographically.

Indeed in the Netherlands there are about 0 AIM users, while the USA has many. Everybody, and I mean everybody over here is using MSN Messenger, save some geeks who are using jabber or ICQ.

In other countries ICQ may still be popular, while others may like the Yahoo! IM.

Re:IM's

[timmyd]

I'd like to go further and say that MSN is popular overseas and with lots of foreigners. Majority of americans I know use AIM; but everyone at school whos from India uses MSN like its their job.

In my experience, MSN handles other languages much better. If I copy some chinese/japanese/korean characters into a msn window, they will show up on the other side if the user has the fonts. But with aim, it is much more complicated and it seems that you have to set aim up for a specific language if you want to do that.

Re:IM's

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very much a regional thing. In Europe and Asian, AOL is far less popular than in the US.

Re:IM's

[DarkEdgeX]

ICQ can do offline messaging, which MSN can't without an annoying add-in installed.

This is probably the number one reason I still like ICQ (I run Trillian, but I always try to get people I have on other networks to give me their ICQ #'s if they have one they use). It's nice being able to send a message offline without having to send an e-mail (especially with people whom you may not have an e-mail address for).

Re:IM's

[alphakappa]

That's because AOL is not available in India - there is no particular reason for someone to download just the messenger.

Re:IM's

[samrolken]

Yes, but if you have someone's MSN handle, then you have their email address. :-P

Re:IM's

[samael]

I use GAIM for Yahoo, ICQ and AOL.

But I use MSN for it's own chat client, because it's the easiest one to use.

Re:IM's

[Alan]

I used to be a hardcore ICQ User (still have it installed with a few contacts now)... but the mass public moved to MSN all of a sudden -- is this in part to the fact that Microsoft shoved it down our throats?


Depending on how you look at it it can be either considered "shoved down our throats" or "made available on the desktop for the average user".

In a way it's good, it's made so that anyone and their dog can communicate via IM (your opinions of how good this part of it is are subjective of course).

On the other hand, you can scream anti-competative, and unfair advantage. Basically they are killing or trying to kill icq/aim the same way that they tried (and in some ways succeeded) to kill netscape.

Re:IM's

[mikael_j]

Personally I have moved to Trillian so that I can use both ICQ and MSN. The reason I "need" MSN is that those of my friends who are only barely able to notice a difference between their TVs and their computers (and only because they are different colours ;) have all fallen for the IM fad quite recently, but most of my contacts in Trillian are still ICQ users although most of them also have MSN for the same reason as I have MSN..

/Mikael

Re:IM's

[mikael_j]

Except for the fact that there are tons of people who registered a hotmail address just so that they could use MSN since they were unaware of the possibility of using non-hotmail addresses with MSN.

/Mikael

Re:IM's

[Jo Owen]

"so I could care less"

IT'S COULDN'T CARE LESS YOU IDIOT, Please for gods sake, learn to speak properly.

Re:IM's

[zero_config]

Well, AIM >>> thats america online, last time i checked there were other counteries in the world too (only two down, lots remaining) ... and in those countries internet users have never even heard of AIM ... moreover, MSN and yahoo messengers probably leave AIM far behind in terms of sheer numbers ... so the topic should have been a GIM taking over MSN/Ymsn ... and oh yeah ... what nightly downtimes ... referrring to MSN (MS bashing :)) .. well, its not THAAAAAAAAT BAAAAAAAAD !! c'mon

Re:IM's

[PetoskeyGuy]

ICQ? I am not a number. Well maybe behind the scenes, but it's much easier to give someone a username then a generic number

Re:IM's

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's bullshit, you fucking n00bit. 9/10 people who use AIM have never even touched the AOL service. Get your facts straight before you post this shit.

Re:IM's

[david.given]

the mass public moved to MSN all of a sudden

Most of the people I know here in the UK use Yahoo. I don't like MSN's interface very much; far too much advertising and crap. Yahoo's is better. For preference, however, I use gaim (I have accounts with practically all the IM providers). Protocol-wise, Yahoo wins because it stores the contact list on the server so that if I change it, all my other machines pick it up automatically. Which is cool. I don't know if MSN does that as well.

Hmm, ICQ... I've just made sure that my ancient ICQ account still works (it does). I can't remember the last time someone sent me a message on it. I think it was spam.

Re:IM's

[geminidomino]

Yea but email is a pita b/c of spam...

New to ICQ, are we?

Re:IM's

[geminidomino]

Definition of Sarcasm

Definition of Irony

"I could care less" is common usage, loudmouth.

Re:IM's

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got no experience with foreigners, but I use gaim now and I don't care what service anyone else is on because I have an account on all of them.

Re:IM's

[jaxle]

last time i used icq i got spam, dunno what its like now.

anyways its complicated, and no one else uses it. imagine meeting a new person and asking what their sn is? oh its 83924525694 :/

your witty comment is greatly appreciated

Re:IM's

[spotter]

and IM isn't prone to spam?

When I used to run ICQ I would have 30-50 messages that I'd have to run through in the morning that were spam messages I'd have to run through in the morning.

In MSN land, you do know the person's e-mail as their im name is their e-mail account. While I'm not a big fan of MSN in general, they do what you want.

Re:IM's

[DarkEdgeX]

grin, the address I use for MSN is a Hotmail account (as the other replier suggested), an account I never read or check, but which I do occasionally use when being forced to sign up for things. :P

Re:IM's

[cygnusx]

Yahoo and MSN are both pretty popular here. The fact that Internet usage boomed in India right along the time MS and Yahoo were getting their IM act together created network effects that ensure that few people know anyone on AOL.

Between MSN and Yahoo, though, the fact that MSN is the least ad-infested major messenger helps. (Yahoo serves ads during group chats, MSN doesn't. AOL seems to serve ads *everywhere* in AIM and ICQ.) Lots of Indians connect from behind corporate firewalls, and for a long time (v5) Yahoo seemed to be rather buggy behind firewalls. Contrary to a lot of groupthink here, XP penetration is not high so the "MS forcing Messenger down our throats" argument doesn't hold up.

Re:IM's

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's how ICQ was. But now it's screwed up.

Re:IM's

[geminidomino]

The point was that, when I quit ICQ back in 99, spam was almost as bad, message for message, on ICQ as it was for email, in some cases worse.

Re:IM's

[anynameleft]

Here in the Netherlands it indeed seems to be a waste of time to compete against Microsoft - almost everyone uses MSN and sometimes even small businesses have an @hotmail.com address. In fact, people often write "mycoolnaam328@h..." when they write down their address.

What is the reason for this? Probably not the service, as you only get 2 MB of storage, your mail is lost after you come back from the summer vacation and Hotmail doesnt even have a spam filter. More likely it is because Microsoft is considered the Coolest Computer Company or something like that, making it impossible for any alternative like Linux, ICQ, AIM, GMail to succeed. So in that light, I would think GIM would be doomed already here.

Btw. Funny is the difference between our eastern neighbours, the Germans: there most people seem to have a web.de or gmx.net addres and use ICQ as their IM...

Re:IM's

[sql*kitten]

MSN all of a sudden -- is this in part to the fact that Microsoft shoved it down our throats?

I prefer MSN to ICQ because MSN tells you when the other person is typing. It makes the conversation flow so much more naturally. Without it, with different typing speeds and people popping away from the window to do other things, you always end up with several different threads of conversation in the same window. Eventually you just have to start again, 'cos you've no idea what they just said "yes" or "no" to.

Re:IM's

[Technonotice_Dom]

and because it's available by default on every WinXP PC

Reminds me of the lawsuits surrounding the bundling of IE with Windows...

It's the same here in the UK I find - everybody I come across uses MSN, but all my American contacts use AIM or sometimes MSN.

Re:IM's

[lachlan76]

Over here in Australia, MSN is much more popular than AIM, or at least with kids, anyway.

Not that I want to use MSN, but all my friends use it, so the only way I have to make myself feel better about it is to get Gaim.

Re:IM's

[nmk]

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's pretty much the same way in Pakistan and, i would think, most of the world (apart from the US). Nobody says IM anymore, just MSN. You'll get asked all the time what your MSN is. To make matters worst, when I ask people for their email address, they'll often just tell me the first part without bothering to append it with @something. The reason being that @hotmail.com is often taken as a given.

But of all this stupidity, the one I find the most difficult to bear is the "where is the Internet Explorer" question (I'm a Mac user). Most people are not even aware that browsers other than Internet Explorer exist. Whenever someone uses my computer, the first question I'm asked is "where is Internet Explorer". IE has become ubiquitous, which is sad because it is, by far, the worst browser in the world.

So really, I don't know how successful GIM would be under these circumstances. People just have a tendency to use MS software over superior alternatives. How I yearn for the days when IM was called IM, browsers were called browsers, and email wasn't known as hotmail.

PS. I NEVER tell people to Google something. I tell them to enter it into a search engine.

Re:IM's

[ManxStef]

Tell you what I miss most from ICQ: the fact that you could set your status to invisible/offline and *then* sign in, so you could quickly check whether certain contacts were around without announcing your presence to everyone - including the people you're trying to avoid (which is what MSN/MS-Messenger does).

Some of the third-party ones (e.g. aMSN) let you do this, but it's still annoying that the official client shouts "Everybody look, I've just signed in even though I'm supposed to be off work sick!" ;)

Re:IM's

[NuclearDog]

Yeah, same here. You can reach me via MSN, AIM, YIM, ICQ, Jabber and IRC. Gaim comes in *very* handy in a situation like this :)

ND

IM

[Rotkiv]

this might just be what it takes to make me an IMer

Jabber Quality

[LogicX]

Can I get some comments from people who've used Jabber as to the quality of the network/clients/features in comparison with some of the other commonly used instant messaging clients/protocols -- or does anyone know of a good comparison site?

Its an interesting concept, no doubt, but knowing nothing of jabber, I am curious if its the way to go.

Re:Jabber Quality

[Nick of NSTime]

I use Jabber at work. The network is fine, and it interoperates with MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and AIM. My only real complaint about it is its UI and the way it does certain things. For example, if you remove a Jabber contact from your "roster," the Jabber contact you removed gets a rude message stating that you've deleted them. That may not bother you, but I really dislike getting emails asking why I'm not someone's friend anymore, when all I was doing was paring down a 100+ name contact list.

Jabber also doesn't always display your AIM and Yahoo contacts.

On the plus side, the graphics are nice and the client has a toast feature, letting you know when someone has come online. The chat window itself is AIM circa 1996, but it does the job.

Hope that helps.

Re:Jabber Quality

[tiptone]

Jabber isn't a client, it's a protocol. So i'm not sure what client you're using it at work, but it's not Jabber. i use Gaim for Jabber, here at work where everything is Windows or Linux.

Gaim doesn't support all the features of Jabber, if you're a windows user Exodus is really one of the best clients (MHO).

Re:Jabber Quality

[noyren]

it has some massive flaws. If a user drops offline, there is no way of finding out if a message goes through or not. I have a friend with a bad internet connection, and he looses about a fair percentage of the messages I send him... That's one thing I miss in every network I've activly used, it could take a checksum of the message recieved and reply "Got message ", and if the checksum is wrong, resend the message.

Re:Jabber Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

There's probably a way to silently boot them, but your particular client may not have provided that. Something involving cancelling presence updates.

Re:Jabber Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

What client do you use? Jabber is a protocol, just like IRC (although so many people say "I'm on mIRC"). My favourite client currently is psi.sourceforge.net it's nice, works on linux and windows, I use both OSs frequently and it's nice to have a consistant UI (I also use firefox everywhere :) ). The only big drawback for psi is its lack of tabs, at least in the version I'm using. Gaim is another good client (although it does much more than jabber), and it does have tabs.

Re:Jabber Quality

[Secrity]

Remember that there are many different clients to use with Jabber servers. Different clients have different features. The features to compare are with the clients, not necessarily the protocol itself. The best to to find out whether it is the way to go is to try it, it's free.

Re:Jabber Quality

[Lehk228]

Jabber servers can be set up to connect to AIM servers as well, regardless of the client.

Go Google.

[caluml]

"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Heh - same as always :)

I'd love to see Google get in with Jabber. Joogle? I use Jabber. But everyone I try to get on there simply says: But all my friends are on MSN. Some people have never ever heard of Yahoo, AIM, or the old classic, ICQ. Go Google, I say. Oh, and don't be evil. Although I'll be using SSL and GPG over Jabber, as usual.

Re:Go Google.

[molarmass192]

I'm betting on GChat a la GMail. Personally, I refuse to use MSN. If my friends want to "chat" they can find me on YIM, AIM (only rarely though) or pick up the telephone like it's 1990 all over again.

Re:Go Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

OHH OHHH what about Gabble! betcha that's it.

Re:Go Google.

[Steelwings]

I think goobber would be a cool name.

Re:Go Google.

[Mr. Bad Example]

> Joogle?

Doesn't quite sound kosher.

Re:Go Google.

[caluml]

I just checked some domain names, and none of them are taken by Google. gabble, gtalk, gim, babble,

Re:Go Google.

[bbk]

It would be obviously named "Gibba", so when you refer to it you sound like Mr. T.

"I pity the fool who doesn't use Gibba Jabber!"

- bbk

Re:Go Google.

[nytewyng]

Phone is nice, but the real benefit of IMing is really in the group mode of conversation (think conference call for free and you can all talk at once with out chaos). Also, most of the tween set are pretty mult-tasking heavy, so they have like 3 or for conversations flowing at once. Because they are 'conference' type conversations, they can ignore it for a few moments while others carry the load. But the real breakthrough for any IM is getting everyone else on it easily. MSN is already installed, so thus lowest barrier to entry. Maybe a java client that you can include in your email (assuming that can get through firewalls or anything?).

Re:Go Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's irrelevant that others may use MSN, etc. It's common for jabber servers to have gateways, so you don't need multiple clients or a client with support for multiple protocols. I use Psi ( http://psi.sourceforge.net ) to connect to jabber.dk which has an MSN gateway (I haven't checked if it has any other gateways, at jabber.org you can check a list of servers with their features listed). An advantage to the single client single protocol is that if, say, the msn protocol is changed, only the server needs to be updated, not your client. So as long as your server is kept up to date, no worries, if it's not, then you're just stuck in the same position than people not using jabber, but never worse :D Oh, there is one gotcha, file transfers across protocols, I don't know if they work.

Re:Go Google.

[ae]

And you can use other servers as gateways (or transports), even if your own doesn't support it. Look here: http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/ar01s12.html.

Re:Go Google.

[Condor7]

I'd love to see Google get in with Jabber. Joogle?

No, it's "Gabber".

Re:Go Google.

[luckyguesser]

I was about to suggest "Gabber" being the obvious solution, as "gab" is a synonym for talking. Then I realized that the only people who can viably "gab" (due to heavy, heavy connotation) are middle-aged or older housewives, and I very nearly stabbed myself in the foot for even thinking this. Then I broke out laughing and had to post it anyway.

Why

[Anonymous Coward]

For what gain or purpose?

audio/video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it support audio and video chatting too? We dont need any more chatting clients, what we need is audio and video support in LINUX.

Re:audio/video?

[Egonis]

gnophone

http://www.gnophone.com/

Re:audio/video?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend TeamSpeak ( http://www.teamspeak.org ) for voice, it's not an IM, but the wide range of codecs means it suits pretty much anybody. Loved it when I had dialup (last thursday!), still use it with low bandwith for gaming, and high if I want to talk comfortably.

Apple uses Jabber

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X 10.4. Server has Jabber builtin. More info at Tiger Server preview.

Wishful thinking

[sessamoid]

This isn't even a rumor. It's basically one guy saying he wishes Google would start a Jabber-based messaging service. How is this front page material?

Re:Wishful thinking

[TopShelf]

Well, it fits right in with the Star Wars fanboy-heard-a-rumor story posted earlier today...

Re:Wishful thinking

[DroopyStonx]

Wish becomes rumor.

Rumor becomes reality.

Think "Diablo II" and "cow level".

Re:Wishful thinking

[Rotkiv]

yeah i just realised that myself, now i'm all dissapointed.

Re:Wishful thinking

[oneiron]

Planting seeds... I'm sure more than a few google employees read slashdot. What better way to prod them into jumping into the IM game than providing them with a nice healthy slashdot-debate to read over? We just took care of their proposal meeting for them.

Sure, it's not news, but since when is slashdot about news?

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

And how is your post "interesting"? It's just some other guy complaining about the story. How many times do you need to be told: if you dont like a story, DONT READ IT, CLICK ON IT, OR MOST IMPORTANTLY POST TO IT!!!! How hard is that to understand?

Re:Wishful thinking

[Our Man In Redmond]

This isn't even a rumor. It's basically one guy saying he wishes Google would start a Jabber-based messaging service. How is this front page material?

Hi. You must be new here.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Ammishdave]

It's a test to see if the Google people read Slashdot...

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

What better way to prod them into jumping into the IM game than providing them with a nice healthy slashdot-debate to read over? We just took care of their proposal meeting for them.

Your userid, oneiron, seems to have something to do with dreams, and I find it appropriate your post is in response to "wishful thinking" because you have an overinflated sense of the importance of Slashdot threads. Any company that would base business decisions on a Slashdot thread deserves to have their company taken from them and be beat over the head with it.

Do you even pay attention to some of the inanities that populate the threads around here? Slashdot couldn't see a userland homerun even if it were the last game of the Series.

Re:Wishful thinking

[oneiron]

OK, I'll bite. Assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. My comments were made with tongue-firmly-in-cheek. Apparently you failed to realize that possibility. Furthermore, I do not expect any company to base a "business decision" on slashdot, and I made no such assertion. If I expected that, I probably would have used a different figure of speech from "planting seeds." Do I think slashdot threads are important? No. Do I think they get the readers thinking about things? Yes. I understand the impact is minimal. No, I don't need you to lecture me on the insignificance of our little community. The ideas that can be gleaned from this thread, aside from all the BS (like your post), would help any corporate employee interested in IMing to introduce themselves to the important issues.

Re:Wishful thinking

[fm6]

Huh? The guy is pointing out a perceived flaw in the story. Half the posts for any given story do that.

business tactics would remove the potential

[circletimessquare]

right now, jabber is just a nuisance to the major im players

but if jabber did get backing from the likes of google, you can bet ms and aol would do their darndest to break jabber's interoperability as much and as often and as permanently as possible

which would leave google with just another proprietary platform, and would ruin jabber's current best feature (interoperability)

Re:business tactics would remove the potential

[codemachine]

Considering that AOL, Yahoo, and MSN previously tried to lock out 3rd party clients, and failed to do it for more than a day or two, I don't think there is too much to worry about.

Plus the other major players wouldn't try to break Jabber's interoperability unless Google was offering them MSN/ICQ/AIM/Yahoo transports as part of their service (which would actually be a good idea for initially migrating people away from the other clients). If it was just vanilla Jabber through jabber.google.com, it might as well be proprietary as far as the competition is concerned. The only difference is that it'd be easier for MS, Yahoo, and AOL to interoperate with Google since they'd be using a standard protocol.

Re:business tactics would remove the potential

[faragon]

Google must play in these arena, as they will have millions of e-mail users and the whole world using his search engine, due to that, usually, when a posibility seems to be feasible, it become a reality, via inertia unstoppable fact.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Bertrand Russell.

They forget

[agent dero]

AIM is already very deeply embedded with many people, even some corporations use it.

Jabber's been around, along with MSN, and Yahoo, still most people I know (personal and online life) use AIM.

You forget that this major ISP that is the largest on the planet, kinda, includes AIM in it's program ;)

Re:They forget

[stevey]

Our company uses an internal Jabber server, and all the Windows desktops have the Exodus client installed upon them.

It's great for chatting to people in other offices, makes people feel a lot more in contact, and it's a lot more immediate than using email.

I've known a lot of local companies using Jabber too - even though I'm sure sometimes the PHBs don't realise it's free software, snuck under the rader..

Re:They forget

[DigiShaman]

I know call centers love using AIM. When I worked at Dell, I could AIM a message to a co-worker while on the phone with a customer. So if I wasn't sure of an answer, I could get a second opinion through AIM. After a while, I learned who as strenghts and weaknesses in available knowledge. Thus, depending on a question, I might ask a certain co-worker on AIM.

Re:They forget

[Ritontor]

This is only the case in the US. Everywhere else on the planet, MSN dominates by a few orders of magnitude. I don't know a single person who uses AIM, but almost everyone i know can be found on MSN. It's scary when you pick up a girl in a pub and end up swapping MSN addresses after you've gotten her phone number.

The reason for MSN's domination? Girls. Plain and simple. If the girls are somewhere, the boys will follow. Domination ensues.

Advertising?

[avalys]

I don't know if their ad-supported model would work in IM, though. I prefer my IM windows to be small and inconspicuous - I don't know if I'd like having text ads (of any size) cluttering up my display.

Re:Advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if their ad-supported model would work in IM, though. I prefer my IM windows to be small and inconspicuous - I don't know if I'd like having text ads (of any size) cluttering up my display.

Methinks they'd just put it where everyone else does, in the buddy list window. They also push image ads via AdSense, I'm sure they'd make more use of them instead of text links if they made an IM client.

Re:Advertising?

[Rotkiv]

I used icq once, and it looked the same as aim in that article, ad in the same place, and the fact that it installed something related to aol on my computer made me hate it.

Re:Advertising?

[caluml]

I don't know if their ad-supported model would work in IM, though.

Information, dear boy, information. If they know what everyone it talking about, saying what they wished they had, etc, they can target ads more effectively at the rest of us.

Sort of reminds me of that saying (which I can't properly remember now): Beware of he who would control access to information, for in his heart, he wants to be your master.

Re:Advertising?

[hawaiian717]

AOL has owned ICQ for a few years now, and has made it so that they are essentially the same. Current versions of AIM and ICQ can talk to each other, they both use the OSCAR protocol and connect to the server on port 5190.

ICQ used to be a lot different. No groups for contacts. Messages can be sent while a user is offline (AIM doesn't have this -- it started out as a service within AOL, so if the user wasn't online, just send them email). Single message per window rather than a single window per contact.

It still offers many of these features as options, but more and more AIM and ICQ are looking a like. A lot like the difference between AOL and CompuServe.

Re:Advertising?

[Przepla]

Sort of reminds me of that saying (which I can't properly remember now): Beware of he who would control access to information, for in his heart, he wants to be your master.

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Commissioner Pravin Lal,
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"

From Alpha Centauri, a game by Firaxis.

Re:Advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if I'd like having text ads (of any size) cluttering up my display.

i agree. there's no way in hell i would use a google im client if it had advertisements. i refuse to use icq (except in gaim) for this very reason, and when i use aim in windows, i use deadaim to get rid of the ads.

Re:Advertising?

[meringuoid]

I loved that quote. Given that I like to win by technological totalitarianism (no I will not give you fusion power, you pathetic prole!) it appealed to my sense of cruelty ;-)

How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Nomihn0]

Google's business is to make things easier to find and understand. How would an instant messaging program be applicable to this mission? The question is what spin Google could put on IMing to make it their own. Just like GMail added conversations and the Google search function, GMessage would need a catch.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Hollins]

Google's killer app seems to be converging to finding exactly the information one needs with the simplest interface possible. To accomplish this, they're getting in the business of storing and processing our information, and by (so far), not being evil, we trust them to do so.

With gmail, we can search all old emails with the same simple interface as searching the web. Now, add IM transcripts (great for business), PIM information, etc. Maybe someday, they'll aggregate even more personal stuff, like bank statements, my car's service history, and so on.

The end result? With the beautifully simple default google interface, I could ask:

• Show me the conversation with my boss regarding TPS reports.
  
• What did I spend on dining out last month?
  
• When is the kids' pediatrician appointment?
  
• How do I get there?

Think of any piece of information you recently looked up or asked for, on computer or hardcopy. Imagine typing it into google and getting the answer.

It could be really cool, and kinda creepy. MS and Yahoo are at a disadvantage to pull this off because: they're behind the curve on search engine technology (look at MS's recently yanked beta), they'll never take the leap of faith to give users an incredibly stripped, ad-free interface (I know yahoo offers one, but they deemphasize it), and not nearly as many people will trust them with this stuff as would trust google.

IM makes a nice next step.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[ErpLand]

It would perhaps remove many people's need to have a Hotmail address purely to be able to use MSN Messenger. Less people tied to Hotmail would probably mean more customers for GMail.

I for one would much prefer to use my own Jabber server to be able to chat directly with someone@gmail.com. Yay for open protocols and inter-server links. At the moment I only use it for work stuff.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Class Act Dynamo]

I don't know, I would prefer that google has nothing to do with my bank statements. Only I and a select few get to know just how little moneys I have.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Elwood P Dowd]

How would an instant messaging program be applicable to this mission?

Pictures. The catch would be pictures.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Hollins]

While your post is in jest, the thing is, I trust google to know my financial information more than I trust my bank. Do you ever read the 'privacy disclosure' they send you once a year by postal mail? It's the flimsy pamphlet with really tiny type size. Also, look at how information is transferred with the credit reporting system.

If you spend too much time thinking about it, you get the urge to close all accounts and keep money under the mattress.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Duhavid]

IM as as web page.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[thrillseeker]

Google's business is to make things easier to find and understand. How would an instant messaging program be applicable to this mission?

Well, there could easily be a bot named, ahhh, google, who would perform searches for you. This bot could "listen" to your chat, know what "room" you were in, etc., and use this metadata to help organize the search returns. Among those returns could be ads - i.e., it's Google via chat.

The good part of Google getting into such a business endeavor would be that they to date have a reputation of not abusing their business relationship to their users, unlike pretty much every other commercially oriented chat protocol.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Shazow]

They could provide online-stored logs.
I use trillian, and I've about 3 years of logs, with over 200 contacts, about 50 megs. That is totally reasonable compared to offering 1 gig of email logs.

I'd like that.

- shazow

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[maskedbishounen]

I don't know about you, but I'm not about to hand off all aspects of my life to some company-- any company; yes, even Google.

I have a little safe in my closet. I file all my paperwork in it by category, oldest stuff first. Need something? Get the key, go to the folder, pull the item.

I would want to allow a single company, which solely exists to make money off of me, to do this for me because...?

I'll be my own Big Brother, thank you.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[otis wildflower]

Meh, iPhoto/iChat would do it better, along with solid video.. .. and the Tiger release of iChat will support Jabber...

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Elwood P Dowd]

I've used both products, and Hello's integration with Picasa is considerably better than iPhoto's integration with iChat. It doesn't matter, though, because iPhoto doesn't run on Windows. That's why there was a reason for Picasa to exist in the first place.

But really, why are you hazing me?

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[DrVxD]

> It would perhaps remove many people's need to have a Hotmail address purely to be able to use MSN Messenger.

Except, of course, you don't neet a hotmail (or msn.com) address to use MSN messenger. It's not obvious, but you can sign up with pretty much any address.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[DrVxD]

> close all accounts and keep money under the mattress.

Damn. If I tried to keep all my money under my mattress, I'd need a much higher bedroom ceiling :)

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Beale]

• Show me the conversation with my boss regarding TPS reports.
• What did I spend on dining out last month?
• When is the kids' pediatrician appointment?
• How do I get there?

And then, ultimately:

• Where did I leave my car keys?

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Hollins]

As I pointed out in a reply to another poster, you really should read the privacy statements that your bank and credit card companies send you via postal mail once a year. In light of the emergence of megabanks, such as Citi and Chase, which can share all your information among subsidiaries, not to mention everything that can be found out from your credit report, I think taking the position you state seems a little superfluous.

MS and Quicken both allow users to store all their financial information online and access via Money and Quicken. I wouldn't trust either company with this info. However, I trust google much more than companies that already have intimate knowledge of nearly all my financial information.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[Jordy]

Google's business is to sell ads. The search engine is just a transport mechanism for their advertising engine. They *used* to be in the search engine business licensing technology, but these days the vast majority of their revenue (98% according to their SEC filing) is from advertisements.

If they think that they can sell more advertisements through IM, they will look into it.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[ThePuD]

buy diamonds with it. problem solved.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[mountiealpha]

Misread that at first:

Only I and a select few get to know just how little monKeys I have.

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[luckyguesser]

so... what's the name of the company who manufactures your safe?

Re:How does this fit the Google company quest?

[mthreat]

You forgot to say "Computer, " first.

Joogle?

[daeley]

Joogle? No. Should be called Gabber. :)

Re:Joogle?

[1010011010]

Gabber, you say?

Re:Joogle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be worse... could be called Goober

Re:Joogle?

[Scaba]

I prefer it be called Jaimsnahoogle.

Re:Joogle?

[FooAtWFU]

Okay then... Goober!

Re:Joogle?

[Anonym1ty]

>>Joogle? No. Should be called Gabber. :)

>Gabber, you say?

Call the damn thing GOOBER fer all I care!

Subscribers and Dating

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's saying you're dating a new woman or want to date a new woman and she uses a different network. Either you or her are going to switch.

Re:Subscribers and Dating

[Billy the Mountain]

That's right! Using Jabber can allow you to postpone dealing with these issues of control until later on.

Say, wasn't this on Seinfeld?

BTM

Re:Subscribers and Dating

[wo1verin3]

Let's saying you're dating a new woman or want to date a new woman and she uses a different network

Please, we both know if a your main concern about meeting a significant other is which IM service they use, that both of you are using AOL.

Re:Subscribers and Dating

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a problem for slashdotters. Generally for us, a "new woman" comes in a cardboard box and must be inflated first...

Re:Subscribers and Dating

[Anonymous Coward]

Or better yet, imagine a world where you don't use instant messaging, and neither does your girlfriend. Hey, that's the world I live in. IM blows. Its target audience is 13 year old girls, and 45 year old pedaphiles.

Re:Subscribers and Dating

[Anonymous Coward]

A match made in heaven, if ever I saw one.

Re:Subscribers and Dating

[pnutjam]

If I only had a mod point...

joogle.com taken

[RobertB-DC]

joogle.com is already taken by a search spammer, though joogle.net has expired and could become available Any Day Now. I'd love to be able to one day say "I rescued [a-z]oogle!"... or alternatively, "I got a nastygram from Google!"

So, I'm OOgling the 1,430 entries for *oogle.*, just in case there's one somebody else missed...

Just as soon as there is...

[bahwi]

A good-looking, fully-functional Jabber client, that is not programmed in Tk/Tcl. =) No, Psi is not fully functional. I need white-board support damnit. No, neos(which has Video and Voice support) is not fully functional, I need it to close without crashing on my XP desktop. I see more new clients for jabber than finished ones. Psi is the best right now, but it is lacking a lot of things, including polish. Hopefully Google's(if it comes to be) would have a finished, polished look that would support some of the great features of Jabber.

We also need a free server that uses the Jabber2 protocol, and works well, and isn't a pain to configure(like jabberd2, but, easy, and needs documentation. To do virtual hosts in Jabberd2, the only instruction is a comment in one of the config files!)

Other than that, once I got my jabber server up, I loved it! Virtual domains rock. And I'm not using any transports or other neat features. So I really hope jabber comes around. And yes, I'm using jabberd2. With SSL I feel safe(unlike the boobs I listen to at starbucks, oops, did I say that?).

Jabber name is: joseph@josephguhlin.com

Rock on. =) Running your own Jabber server is awesome. And hopefully google would follow all standards, so I could keep @josephguhlin.com and connect to friend@google.com

Re:Just as soon as there is...

[codemachine]

It'd be even better if all the players got on board, so we could connect to friend@hotmail.com, and 12345678@icq.com . I'd really love to start using my icq number again, but only those with trillian or gaim tend to bother with icq nowadays.

Why bother doing a trademark search?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing they're going to call it GAIM

Re:Why bother doing a trademark search?

[TheSpoom]

Somehow I doubt they'll do that.

Re:Why bother doing a trademark search?

[focitrixilous P]

Somehow I think that was a joke.

Re:Why bother doing a trademark search?

[Louis A. J.]

But the Google Instant Messenger Program has such a nice ring to it. And it's not like the GIMP is being used for anything else right? ;)

"Get the gimp."
"The gimp's sleeping."
"Well I guess you'll just have to wake him up then, Won't ya?"

sounds like...

[cavebear42]

One engine to index them all
one engine to find them,
One engine to return them all
and to the results bind them.

I shall call it Goobber!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google + Jabber = Goobber

Somehow, though, I just don't think this name will take off.... regardless, considering how well Gmail is implemented, I know Google could do chat quite nicely.

Re:I shall call it Goobber!

[enigmals1]

Now THAT is funny my friend ;)

Don't know why you haven't got a mod 5 Funny yet ;)

Re:I shall call it Goobber!

[kfg]

Sittin' in the basement, on a summer's day
Chattin' with my net mates, passin' time away
Sittin' in the darkness, scratchin' at my fleas
AIM's for dorks and lusers, give me Goobber please!

Please, please, please, please, give me Goobber please
AIM's for dorks and lusers, give me Goobber please!

I think this song has lasted, almost long enough
I have to post on /. (k5's just too tough)
I haven't got a real life, so I'm beggin' on my kness
AIM's for dorks and lusers, give me Goobber please!

Please, please, please, please, give me Goobber please
AIM's for dorks and lusers, give me Goobber please!

KFG

Re:I shall call it Goobber!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still better than Booger, don't you think?

What would it mean?

[Anonym1ty]

I don't know if the story is anything to do with Jabber. I mean look at it this way; What would it mean if Google started its own IM service period?

Yahoo did it and what did that mean? AIM/AOL are still here. But the thought is interesting enough as it is.

As for an open protocol... I don't know if it would mean a whole hell of a lot. I like the IM but I also like the ability to use VoIP or Video if I want.

Whatever Google comes up with I can only speculate that the quality of the clientele would be a lot highr than either AOL or MSN. I'm using Y! now, but more as it's the only one I have after ruling the other two out that has any number of people to be able to chat with.

Re:What would it mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to know what Google is going to do, just look at Yahoo! Google finally figured out that all that crap on the web wasn't a good foundation to build new services on. They needed to own content (i.e. local.google.com). Also, the needed to figure out what users wanted so they created a product for personalization (i.e. gmail). Yippeee. Great idea. Too bad Yahoo! has all that plus more. Searching and indexing that stuff on the web is great, but to make it useful, ya gotta own some content. The people at Google's strategy group do one thing all day -- they look at Yahoo! So much for innovation...

IM has never been about software or protocals,

[Clockwurk]

it always has and always will be "What are all my friends using".

It also seems a bit silly for Google to be interested in IM. Google's services always revolve around searching (even gmail), something that isn't very useful for IM. They could perhaps make finding buddies or finding past conversations easier, but other than that, I fail to see where google could work their magic.

Re:IM has never been about software or protocals,

[Juanvaldes]

Logs. Good searching for buddies and searching of logs is different enough. If Yahoo could do it, Google can.

Re:IM has never been about software or protocals,

[LiquidCoooled]

The only thing google needs at this point is a gMail notifier, something which is in beta at the moment.

This whisper about the IM client was brought out in the comments here on slash, and probably echoed the meme going around.

Lots of people now have the google toolbar, they are starting to have google outside the usual search bounds. I don't see an IM client as a bad thing.

Having google searches on previous and current conversations would most likely scare people too much, but something like (pie in the sky) collaberative research - allow you and your friends to hunt for related information without having crossover of results and wasted searches, to pull the final details together in a shared results page.

We become the pigeon.

Re:IM has never been about software or protocals,

[Kiryat Malachi]

Google could just as easily write a client for an existing network, in co-operation with that network, and integrate the logs and whatever other features they want that way.

There's no real reason for Google to go about setting up their own IM network.

Re:IM has never been about software or protocals,

[Anonymous Coward]

unless your on a mobile phone, then IM can be a great search tool.

email linkage

[theMerovingian]

The only reason I have Messenger installed on all my computers is to give me a popup when I have a new message in my hotmail account.

If google can popularize Gmail enough, and integrate it with their messenger service, I can see alot of people switching over.

Triple points if they could get it to work with the other messenger services seamlessly. I would rather have one client, and be able to talk to everyone. Although there are probably some legal/technical issues to prevent this from working properly, it would definitely give me incentive to switch to an all-google solution for my personal communications.

Quadruple points if Google bought Vonage or a VoIP company and integrated everything seamlessly. That would be cool, but a little scary.

Re:email linkage

[Joey Patterson]

Triple points if they could get it to work with the other messenger services seamlessly. I would rather have one client, and be able to talk to everyone.

You already can.

Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[Sanity]

What makes Google the right company to do this - is it only that they can get sufficient eyeballs?

If so, there is nothing particularly interesting about this. Sure, any piece of software that gets a direct link from the Google front page is going to have a massive advantage over its competitors, and yes, were that to happen, it would be nice if that software happened to use an open protocol with lots of open source clients.

The fact that he chose instant messaging as the application, and Google as the big powerful company with all the eyeballs is somewhat irrelevant, the same would be true of almost any application and almost any company with a massively popular website.

Of course, if the big powerful company just happens to be Google, the darling of Slashdot editors, then it certainly won't hurt his advertising click-through revenue :-)

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[thisissilly]

Imagine if "Gabber" automatically logged your instant messaging into your integrated gmail account. Imagine being able to use google to search all your old emails and instant message sessions for some dangling peice of information, like a phone number someone gave you six months ago.

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Hello? McFly? <bop-on-forehead>

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[oneishy]

Why is google the right company to do this?

Simple put, they have the most to gain. Perhaphs you should read this blog about how google probably will move into areas that give them a) more eyes to show context relevant ads or [more importantly] b) move into areas that give them insight into what people are interested (IM's would be relevant here) or areas that give them information on where and what we spend out money (this includes being a go-between for the client and a merchant, or merchant and bank).

So you see... with googles software expertiese in making things easy to use, (and simple at the same time) they could make people *want* to switch to their IM client, while gaining valuable insight at the same time

It's all about driving the add revenue, and for google that means giving more relevant ads (which advertisers pay more for).

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[Jo Owen]

That really is a brilliant idea, kudos.

It could be woven into the 'conversation' format that gmail already has for the e-mail.

That feature alone would make loads of people switch.

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[otis wildflower]

Where's the linux download link?

Or the OS X downloader?

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Why are you asking me, & what is your problem?

Make your point or don't. No, none of Google's desktop applications are cross platform. So?

Re:Why Google and why Instant Messaging?

[Henk Poley]

Make your point or don't. No, none of Google's desktop applications are cross platform. So?

But they do have an open interface/API.

Searchable IMs?

[JTWYO]

I'd really like this if it meant I could search my IMs the way Google allows the searching of GMail (as I understand it). With AOL instant messenger, which I use due to all my friends using it, there's no archive at all, so a good chunk of my daily correspondence is lost forever. If there was some privacy-friendly way that I could store all my IMs and search them for important links and discussions I've had, using Google's powerful tools, I would definitely jump ship and try to bring as many people with me as possible.

Re:Searchable IMs?

[goodchef]

I'm not sure what the status is on Windows or Linux, but for OS X, both iChat and AOL's AIM client have been able to automatically log IMs for a while now. I prefer the AIM client, as it stores logs in HTML format. iChat stores them as binary files, which preserve buddy icons and all that jazz, but are harder to grep from the command line.

Re:Searchable IMs?

[ensignyu]

Well, GAIM and DeadAIM both archive IMs and let you search through them. They could probably add a full-text search if people were actually interested in that.

Re:Searchable IMs?

[mandos]

How about being able to click just one button, and having a log of your IM stored in your GMail account? Maybe take it one step further and have it automactically pull some relavant parts too and put them at the top. For example, any IM with a link in it could be copied to the top with surrounding context, so you don't have to go hunting for it later.

Another feature I would like to see is have Google run queries in the background on my IMs, and at the bottom of the IM window show a few links, say one to a web search, one to an image search, one to a news search and one to a GMail search (if I'm talking about it now, I'm likely to have before too). That would help tremendously in actually finding information. It's nice that I can go search for the info, but having an automated process going and finding what I'm currently chatting about and displaying it to my friend and myself would be quite a feature.

Re:Searchable IMs?

[JTWYO]

Wow, that's a great idea. Having google running queries based on each part of the conversation, so when something comes up that you would want to search for, the data would already be there. That's proactive! It would add some interesting hypertextuality to a conversation too. It'd be interesting to see how you could end up incorporating the images into the conversation, for instance. Maybe they could auto-link addresses to mapquest, that sort of thing too, for those ocassional directions conversations. A search-engine-integrated instant messenger by Google could be pretty damn powerful.

Re:Searchable IMs?

[DecadeSol]

A good AIM plugin type deal is middleman

Features include Buddy List Customization (Ad Removal, etc), Cloning of AIM, Buddy Aliasing, Talking While Away, and scripting (including a Winamp song script).

Google Ads

[usefool]

Is this another Google venture (like GMail) to create more placements for their Ads?

With logged messages, they can do target advertising just as well as on GMail.

Re:Google Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks are probably more likely to switch to an ad-free IM client before they make the big leap and switch IM providers entirely. who wants to start over with a new handle?

Re:Google Ads

[Neophytus]

They don't need to log. Just throw in some real-time analysis.

yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[autopr0n]

While ICQ may have had some usefull features (feel free to dig through the 450 page manual), the interface was awfull. It got killed by AIM and MSN because they were simple to use.

Re:yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[drivers]

I don't know about anyone else but my family members (I don't do IM anymore) all switched away from ICQ because of the annoying ad banners and porn spam messages.

Re:yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[benzapp]

I always thought it was the server side contact list. That is one thing that always annoyed the shit out of me with ICQ. I had different contact lists on sooo many machines it was crazy.

Re:yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[Jugalator]

So use a client that supports the ICQ network?

I use Miranda myself, and gets a clean and powerful interface while maintaining the benefits with being ad-free while still having offline messaging, etc.

Re:yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[geminidomino]

Except AOL, MSN, and Yahoo call seem to do that crap now. It sucks when I switch between Gaim and Irssi.

Re:yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[Anonymous Coward]

use licq:
www.licq.com

Re:yes, but ICQ had a *HORIBLE INTERFACE*

[geminidomino]

err,I just realized that there is probably a bit of explaination required, lest I look like a fool for claiming to use an IRC client for IMing.

I actually use bitlbee accessed THROUGH irssi. I'm not allowed to install software on my box at work, but nothing stops me from shelling into my own server where I can run whatever I like.

This won't happen any time soon

[Espectr0]

Still, i would like it to happen. But if google wants to kill msn et all, jabber has to first support audio and video chat.

They are too busy with their current projects. Gmail has been in beta for almost half a year and it still isn't final. And still as a beta project, they made yahoo and msn catch up to provide more space.

I wonder how google IM would shape up aim, yahoo, msn and icq.

Re:This won't happen any time soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail has been in beta for almost half a year and it still isn't final.

Google itself was "Beta" for almost a whole year. I started using it when an article about PageRank appeared in SciAm and I haven't looked back since.

Re:This won't happen any time soon

[EnglishTim]

But I wonder what percentage of people actually use audio and video chat?

And I wonder of them, how many people would be prepared to drop it in favour of only having to run one IM client?

Re:This won't happen any time soon

[emurphy42]

They are too busy with their current projects. Gmail has been in beta for almost half a year and it still isn't final.

Diminishing returns. Let's say fifty people are working on Gmail; adding ten more is only going to do a certain amount of good, especially after you subtract the overhead of coordinating those ten with the existing fifty. Put those ten to work on a separate project, on the other hand...

Re:This won't happen any time soon

[geekoid]

wow, I didn't know you managed the time for the varies teams at Google.

This would be great

[PacketScan]

This would truely bring Aol, Msn, and yahoo to their knees
Sign me up for some beta testing baby!

As long as they don't call it "Goober"

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

They will do fine.

Note about MSN- Contrary to you folk apparently, all MY friends have moved to AIM. Perhaps there are pockets of users that use one or the other.

Note about offline messages- I have also bemoaned this ICQ feature lacking in MSN/AIM. But really, that sort of functionality is what email is for.

Re:As long as they don't call it "Goober"

[metamatic]

It's definitely cliques. I only know one person who uses MSN; everyone else I know is on AIM or Jabber.

News: Google rules the world.

[jakel2k]

Wow google looks like they might dominate the world.

I for one welcome our new Google overlords....

AOL and AIM

[jetkust]

After my DSL internet service wen't out, I've had the privelage of being tortured by the wonders of the AOL Client Software version 9.0. That free trial disc that says you don't need a credit card even though you do. Anyway, it's just as bad as it always was just with prettier colors. Kills the system resources for no reason, non responsive (especially for sign off). constantly wants you to download a lenghty update. constanly annoys you with stupid ads every second it gets. And then puts like 10 icons on the desktop of totally worthless applications.
Anyway i never really had a problem with AIM. In fact, that rate a buddy thing is fairly damn amusing as well as other things. But just thinking about how bad an experience AOL is (at least with dial up), how long can AIM last before it really is useless (as the article calls it)?

Jabber great because of encryption

[0x0d0a]

All I care about is whether or not I get end-to-end encryption.

The reason Jabber is so great is because of its encryption support. I can load up gabber and use SSL (and end-to-end GPG encryption within *that*).

If Google gives me end-to-end encryption, Google will win me and everyone I can convince over. Everything else is irrelevant. The current state of IM security is abysmal.

That means that there will be a single party that can monitor who communicates with who (not ideal, but not that far from the existing cell phone situation), but not the *content*.

Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[ErikTheRed]

You can encrypt conversations using Trillian Pro over AIM (both parties must be running this combo)

Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you have GPG encryption doesn't mean everyone will use it right!

Just look at the bozos that use AIM Encrypt

Everyone uses the same key pairs!! Hahhahaha. I find this HILARIOUS. Anyone can decrypt anyone else's messages because they all have the same keypairs. And yet, for some reason nobody has stopped them. It's really baffling. I almost wonder if the people who created this publically available key are aiming to compromise encrypted security on AIM, not help it.

It is even better when you send someone something using their bad key with your good key and you're still compromised.

Really, encryption is only as good as the people that use it and 99.99999999999999999999999999% of all users will use it incorrectly. It's a false sense of security if there ever was one.

Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody (to a reasonable approximation of "nobody") cares whether their IM client can be run over GPG-encrypted SSL, let alone cares about that to the exclusion of everything else.

Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[cortana]

And ICQ. Unfortunatly it is simple anonymous end-to-end stuff, so there is no guarantee that you are talking to who you think you are talking to.

Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys make a great encryption product (I have only used it for MSN on OSX and Windows). It works transparently but does require all parties in the chat to be running it to enable encryption.

Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[ErikTheRed]

My friends are strange^H^H^H^H^H^H unique enough to where I can easily identify them...

Web searchable chat logs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, that's all we need. Google caches all of our chat logs and data mining them for ad words. What a wonderful idea!

What next, Google VoIP telephone service that keeps "wonderful open source" OGG backups of every telephone call? Comes with free Google cellular phone service, of course. Google Internet that records every bit you transmit so you can revisit and replay that network activity for later? And finally, Open Source Google OS that logs your keystrokes to Google.com and finally consumes all internet activity.

And then into real life, the Google-HP scanner that puts your images and important documents "on the web?" The Google "security camera" that watches your house for intruders and keeps a searchable video log on the web. Google health monitor that logs your heart rate and vital signs to the internet, too! High blood pressure? Try www.asparinforless-discountdrugs.dvi-commericals-e nterprises.cx !

Re:Web searchable chat logs?

[Scorchio]

I seem to recall a spoof Google-looking site that claimed that Google had acquired a large archive of old icq/msn chat logs and had made them searchable. This was not too long after they acquired the usenet archives from Dejanews, so it wasn't too big a stretch of the imagination. There were shouts of privacy concerns from the unwary, before folks realised it was picking from a few sections of fabricated conversations. Or something like that.

I can't find it now; I believe Google may have persuaded them to take the site down. Either that or they don't index it, as I can't find it on Google...!

Miranda

[hey]

Try Miranda. a very nice open source multi IM protocol client. Including Jabber, of course.

Great!

[Megane]

Now we can have all the fun of Ad-Words, in chat mode! Just imagine all the fun advertisements that could be keyed off of your chat sessions!

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, all the ad-words in my chat sessions would point to porn sites... as would the chat sessions of most people discussing Bush.

Where's the profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why a major company would push a distributed protocol like Jabber. It's an open protocol where anyone can set up a server. It's not the same environment where most people use their service and an "official" client with advertising. No money coming in.

I think we all will switch to Jabber, but I don't think the push will come from big companies. It will come from ISPs offering Jabber service as part of your paid service.

It's all about the software

[sycomonkey]

In the end, most IM protocols are the same, so really, it just matters what format is supported, and what your friends use. If everyone would switch over to something that's open, then you would have a choice about the software. I really hate the AIM software, but a lot of my friends use it, so I'm stuck with it unless I want to go with third party software that stops working every other week. Honestly the MSN messanger software is better than AIM.

So I would gladly use Jabber if anyone else did.

Meh

[mcc]

After being constantly screwed up by many of the features of AIM-- such as file transfer, or the interpretation of linebreaks-- being handled in bizarre and totally different ways depending on the exact combination of platform, client, official AIM client version, and presence or absence of a NAT,

and after spending all summer on traditional UNIX machines, watching toc.oscar.aol.com kick me half the times I tried to sign on,

I am once again very enthusiastic about the idea of AIM being dethroned, as long as it isn't by Microsoft. Just make sure iChat handles it, and I'll be so happy.

But it won't happen. I've never used AIM because it was a good program; it never has been. I suspect things are much the same for others. I use AIM not to communicate, but to communicate with a specific set of specific people, and so I have to use AIM because those people are on the AIM network. Google could make the best IM system in the world and that likely wouldn't change. Google could make their IM system interoperate with AOL's and it would probably not help any since I'd still have to deal with the world blowing up every time I want to send a windows user an image.

ICQ and Pavlov

[wikdwarlock]

When I was a freshman in undergrad, I (as well as our entire campus) was addicted to ICQ. One night I was fooling around, listening to all the .wav files on my laptop. The default player was set as WinAmp, and the loop feature was activated. I clicked the ICQ "Uh oh!" .wav and instinctively moved my mouse to click the message icon to see who'd messaged me. When I saw no message, I was freaked and looked at WinAmp. Of course, the .wav looped and like a trained dog, as soon as it went "Uh oh!" I moved to click the non-existant msg. This happened 3 times before I figured out what was going on.

Ahh...to have a 5 digit user number again...those were the days!

IT was the ICQ spam

[LordZardoz]

I switched over to MSN because of the amount of spam coming in over ICQ. Aside from that, the interface for MSN simply feels better (messages sends when you hit enter by default, simple appearance). While ICQ can be setup to do all that MSN does by default, its the fact that MSN does it by default.

END COMMUNICATION

Easy:

[raehl]

All google needs to do if find a way to translate AIMlish into English.

Re:Easy:

[red floyd]

u r s0 r1t3!

Re:Easy:

[DrVxD]

> translate AIMlish into English.

Since when have the Amish been using IM clients?

Use them all!

[randomErr]

Just use GAIM and you can use all the major protocals, including AIM, MSM, and Jabber.

Re:Use them all!

[gral]

GAIM's Jabber client is not done to well, yet. Jabber lets you use all those as transports easily. You use a Jabber client like PSI and the server you are connected to can contact Yahoo, AIM, MSN, etc. for you. It's interesting.

Re:Use them all!

[bburton]

Isn't that the whole problem? Having multiple, incompatible, proprietary protocols? Many of which change on a regular basis, which breaks Gaim. It's a big hassle.

What we need is open, free protocol that everyone can use. So I think that this is a good idea.

But for right now I'm using AIM TOC on Gaim. It's the only one that doesn't change every month. :-P

IPO

[viggen9]

Considering the recent IPO that raised a couple Billion dollars, google will need to do something with all the money (besides devoting fridays to "millionaire picnics")

on the other hand...

[Trepidity]

Pricewatch.com and pricegrabber.com are still beating froogle.google.com by a large margin.

Re:on the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pricegrabber and Pricewatch do something froogle fails at. Coherent listings. Last time I checked froogle I got 1 page of stuff I was looking for and 100 pages I didn;t want. Plus the prices zseemed enormously bloated.

Re:on the other hand...

[bananaape]

It wasn't until relatively recently that Froogle was linked on the Google home page, right? Maybe that has something to do with it.

Re:on the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the fact that they're a million times better than froogle has something to do with it too. I love google as much as the next guy, but I'm sorry, froogle sucks.

Re:on the other hand...

[General_Tso]

What I do like about Froogle is that their product listing is more inclusive than those of Price Grabber or Pricewatch. It does not matter for those of you (all of you?) just shopping for the lastest, greatest 64-bit, digitial video playing, wireless whatever, but look for a mountain bike or something else that requires you being outside and you'll be better off with Froogle, for example. The interface criticism is valid, though.

God, i hope so

[Lisandro]

I would kill for an unified IM system; Jabber is the best out there so far. There's a good primer at http//www.jabber.org, but basically, think of an instant e-mail; the network stays decentralized. No one controls it, there's not a single server running the show. Not only that, right now Jabber can be "bridged" onto other IM networks, so transition can be smoothed, to a degree. Your own ISP could host a Jabber server for you, with the same username as your mail, for example. Neat stuff.

The protocol is also well designed, as far as i've looked into it. I'm forced to use MSN, and i've already stumbled into the "can't block annoying kids" problem. ICQ is nice, but seems to be dying, and AOL i can't stand.

going against microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of chatting with your friends is that you can do it, so you will use to whatever your friends use. I have personally have seen everyone now moving to MSN cos is what everyone is using it now.

Google can use its brand power, few improvements here and there and the "no evil" stuff to lauch any (free) sevice and people will flock to it, like it is happening with gmail. How they would make money with it is another question (ad-sense stuff on you chatting?). One application that I can think of would be that you can save your chats and they would be automatically saved togethe with the emails of that person in your gmail account, together with the pictures that you swap via chatting, etc. It could be actually quite useful.

I was thinking the othe day that if google would launch a "googled" firefox, encouraging users to browse using the custom google super duper google browser, how much browser share iexplorer.exe would loose.

At the end of the day they are fighting against Microsoft. /AC

Invites

[duncanatlk]

OT but...
I have Gmail invites for the first 3 replies.

Re:Invites

[Lisandro]

I'd love one :)

Re:Invites

[viggen9]

i'll bite

Re:Invites

[FubarPA]

Lucky you... I don't have any to give, and I'm lookin for one for my wife...

Re:Invites

[pipplo]

really? I'd like one :)

Re:Invites

[duncanatlk]

I don't do IM so you'll have to do better than that.
Hint - email.
Obfusticate if you wish
Two left!

Re:Invites

[Lisandro]

lisandro at hotmail.com You = the man :)

Re:Invites

[infocruiser]

ersmith@ucsd.edu

Gmail

[Plake]

Um, did Google just not start Gmail not that long ago for a communication using their systems? Also, it's in beta, they'd probally wait till that launches and sees what kind of a reaction they'll get to it before they build an infrastructure for IM'ing.

I personally rarely use IM compared to my email and with me using a Gmail account it's even easier. I have all of my accounts forwarding over too it for a central portal.

IM is a hard market to make ground in. Most people are picky about what network they're on (MSN, AIM, ICQ).

All my friends are on AOL

[fredopalus]

Most people aren't as interested in the features of the IM client as much as the popularity of it. AIM has a lot of people using it and that won't shift to Google very quickly.

I am Sick Of 'Instant' Messanging

[therealfitzman]

It's so 1996. Can't we come up with a new technology? Perhaps 'Future Messanging'(tm)? Future Messanging would allow you to send a reply to someone BEFORE they even send you a message! Of course you'll be receiving a reply to that message before you send yours as well. FYI: I have already replied to any replies that may appear here.

Re:I am Sick Of 'Instant' Messanging

[therealfitzman]

This message is a Future Message (proof of concept).

Re:I am Sick Of 'Instant' Messanging

[dr bacardi]

Can you show me what one of these messages would look like? Just to prove the concept.

Thanks!

Re:I am Sick Of 'Instant' Messanging

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't listen to the next poster. He's an idiot.

Re:I am Sick Of 'Instant' Messanging

[therealfitzman]

Wow! We did it! My site is going to get /.'d now damnit!

Re:I am Sick Of 'Instant' Messanging

[therealfitzman]

Someone is probably going to call me an idiot

GAIM

[raquelita]

GAIM is another open souce muliplatform and multi IM protocol client.

I use it in Linux and Win, for messaging in MSN, ICQ and Jabber :-)

Yeah, no kidding.

[autopr0n]

Not suprising this was on an apple site. Dreaming up 'cool' products and services whole of the cloth and reporting them as news seems to a hobby for these people.

Why would it be attached to IM?

[2nd Post!]

If your GIM username is tied to your gmail account, why not have it show up when you view your email?

Or when you browse Google/The web, since gmail is web based?

Have we found the missing step 2?

[Knight2K]

1. Pick a popular Internet technology
2. Attach Google's name to it.
3. Profit!!!

Here are a few:

If Google made a MMORPG it would rule the earth!

If Google made a Linux distribution with Spotlight-like search, it would rule the earth!

If Google let me host all my MP3's it would rule the earth!

Seriously though, it might be interesting to have all of my IM history searchable, but I mostly use it for one-off conversations about things of limited importance.

Besides, as general benevolent as Google seems to be, do we really want to route sensitive messages through a central place? Especially with the recent Slashdot articles about VOIP being required to support wire taps. Do we want adwords showing up keyed off of our IM conversations? How could we secure such a system?

Re:Have we found the missing step 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, as general benevolent as Google seems to be, do we really want to route sensitive messages through a central place? Especially with the recent Slashdot articles about VOIP being required to support wire taps. Do we want adwords showing up keyed off of our IM conversations? How could we secure such a system?

Besides, as general benevolent as AOL/Microsoft seems to be, do we really want to route sensitive messages through a central place? Especially with the recent Slashdot articles about VOIP being required to support wire taps (aim/msn/ichat/etc). Do we want adwords showing up keyed off of our IM conversations? How could we secure such a system?

Re:Have we found the missing step 2?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Seriously though, it might be interesting to have all of my IM history searchable, but I mostly use it for one-off conversations about things of limited importance.

Use a client with logging enabled.

Grep.

(Note: I use this exact combination with iChat on OS X. It works great on those rare occasions I go "Hmm... She sent me her address in an IM a month ago, let me go find the correct log now.")

Re:Have we found the missing step 2?

[lou2112]

Seriously, someone should create a template for Slashdot to use:

There's an interesting article over at (site) that speculates on the possibility of an (common service) offered by Google that would be based on (corresponding protocol). If (protocol) was supported by a major company like Google, it could dominate over proprietary services such as (main commercial product) or (Microsoft app for said service).

I mean, it's interesting, but these posts draws most of the same conclusions that those discussions about GMail, etc.

Posters without vision..

[iamsure]

Many posters are asking why Google, what would they add, etc..

What little vision!

First and foremost, searching archives of IM's sucks on almost every windows client there is. GAIM, Miranda, Trillian, AIM, MSN-IM, etc etc. Thats a niche waiting for them - they are the kings of search.

Second, for Google to be universal, they need contact management soon. They need to know WHO someone is. Orkut is a step there. Gmail's contact manager *sucks*.

Combine the two, AND an instant messenger that interoperates between all the networks ALA GAIM, and you suddenly have a complete profile, 6+ potential screennames, possibly a website, their gmail address, and voila - you have a strong awareness of who the user is.

NOW use THAT to improve search results - google for pages that Linus Torvalds wrote. Now google knows what his IM names are, what his webpage is, what his gmail address is, and can specify ALL of those pages containing those items as "better hits" than just any webpage. It can even do it transparently (hidden) for better security.

Taking it a step further, you now have the makings of a web-based contact management system - email, IM, blogs, profiles, images, all from their various packages.

Sounds visionary to me!

Re:Posters without vision..

[Wudbaer]

This would be like tape-recording all your spoken conversations. What do you need to search your IM conversations for ? "Hey, you called me this-and-that on January 24th, 2005 11:23:11, don't deny it ! I got proof !" Yeah. Great. Well... perhaps not.

It's already more than enough that I can find all the shit I wrote on usenet ten years ago when I was young and foolish on Google groups as well as my old, for me long inaccessible homepages from 94/95 on Google. If Microsoft tried this, everyone would be up in arms, but because it is Google it would be oh so cool.

Re:Posters without vision..

[crabpeople]

"and you suddenly have a complete profile, 6+ potential screennames, possibly a website, their gmail address, and voila - you have a strong awareness of who the user is."

ashcroft is that you?

becuase your friends cant be trusted to give you accurate information about themselves - hey lets just "compile a profile" of them!
some people dont want everyone to know their favourite brand of snack cakes.

Re:Posters without vision..

[cookiepus]

It can even do it transparently (hidden) for better security.

Security through obscurity!?

Re:Posters without vision..

[iamsure]

>This would be like tape-recording all your spoken conversations.
You are ignoring the fact that most IM clients already let you do so, and I see no reason why Google couldnt also allow you to change from "logging" to "not".

As long as the default is logging, they have a valuable commodity.

Re:Posters without vision..

[iamsure]

>Security through obscurity!?
heh. Well, in a choice between showing private data publicly and not - yes.

Re:Posters without vision..

[Demanche]

One thing you guys seem to be missing...

One advantage to webmail companys is a app to retrieve email.. or notify..

I recently downloaded a program called "bol" form rediffmail.com just for quick access to my 1gb account there.. i could imagine a offical chat client.. with access to checking mail fast on gmail.. in combination with gmail coming out of beta would be pretty good

;)

Merge IM and GMAIL

[artlu]

Imagine being "always available" and if you are not at your IM it would go and stay in your GMAIL account right now.

gShares.net

please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please over throw AIM. I hate AIM to its core of its stupid closed messaging protocol. How better then Google and Jabber to free us all!

Viva La Google/Jabber!

Why Should Google have to do this at all?

[LWATCDR]

Every ISP could run a Jabber server now just like they run email and news servers. And just like email and news you cold pick what client you want to use with your ISPs server. The down side is what do you do about IM Spam? Of course you could have other suppliers like hotmail and google offering web based solutions or even fancy clients that pushed ads. Why should IM be any different than email or usenet news?

Google Messenger

[Anonymous Coward]

Google seems to be progressing from a deskbar (toolbar.google.com/deskbar/) to email (gmail.google.com), email with a desktop email alert (toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/index.html) and hopefully a instant messenging client. Integrating web search, searable archived queries, searchable IM archiving, relevant text ads, and that 1Gb of email storage with an integrated single sign on is an interesting possabillity. IMHO I think that is google's overall strategy, and they are just parting out to us individual components of what will eventally an integrated ad delivery system. The question is really whether they can design everything so well, that people would put up with ads. I currently have gmail and I don't mind the ads, if anything they are humorous (and yes, I'm away of other free 1GB emails like mail.walla.com etc.). What do you think?

Re: Not Joogle...

[Omerna]

The name for a new Google IM service would have to be Gchat (continues the theme of Gmail).

IMoogle

[poopie]

I propose the name IMoogle.

It just sounds so funny.

Last thing we need are more applications that have a generic name preceded by x,g, or k (or i)

Can't you just imagine the discussions about rolling out "Enterprise IMoogle"

Re:IMoogle

[caluml]

Can't you just imagine the discussions about rolling out "Enterprise IMoogle"

I can't remember life before Google, but I bet we thought "Google" sounded pretty stupid back then.

Re:IMoogle

[UnholySauce]

Maybe I'm just a dork, but that sounds to me like an Apple-created Final Fantasy product.

Re:IMoogle

[miyako]

I propose the name IMoogle
Kupo!

Re:IMoogle

[Anonymous Coward]

or "Koogle" if kde decides to port it...

I don't MSN cause it's good I MSN cause it's easy

[GoClick]

I like the MSN interface, the popups and the easy to use windows. Not that anything else would be too hard for me but my friends aren't techies and it works well for them. So it's good. I get to talk to the ladies and the ladies get to talk to me, and they could call care less about switching.

forget jabber..

[Suppafly]

forget jabber, google should just make an aim client.

finally

[yagu]

This would be a silver bullet. Maybe not to shoot aol and yahoo out of the air/sky..., but to finally open up the protocols. This would be anathema to the proprietary message services, but how nice to finally not having to explain to friends, relatives, etc... why they can't talk to so-and-so. Once everyone starts moving to Gjabber (google jabber).

I suspect google may have something more up their sleeve, incorporating some of their smarts and technology into the messaging to make it even more attractive. I can hardly wait.

One Word: Miranda

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.miranda-im.org/Miranda - ALL you need.. If GOOG wants to support open IM, they should look at Miranda, all the float none of the bloat.

Obligatory OT Simpsons reference

[PsiPsiStar]

You, Sir, are worse than Morgoth.

Open == more devices

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Open protocols are very important. Consider what happens when, say, MS controls a protocol.

Even when MS writes portable applications, they limit the devices where they can be used. For an example of where this occurs, look at their WinCE family devices. To get a license for, say, PocketWord, you must have PocketPC. To get a license for PocketPC you must have a form factor that looks pretty much like an ipaq (ie screen of a certain size, exact set up of keys etc). Microsoft controls everything through their licensing. If someone was to want to get creative and make a device that looks different or has a different feature set then you will not get licenses for the applications you want.

These licenses are done in the name of "user interaction" ie to ensure that the software works consistently for the user, but is also commoditises the mobile devices and gives the control of the device architectures to MS and HP (their biggest licensee).

To get any creativity into mobile space requires open standards.

Re:Open == more devices

[OrangeTide]

It's pretty reasonable to tie hardware and software together into a single indivisible unit. It's better for support, it's better for UI consistency which all translates into a better user experience.

If you hate the hardware (it's too expensive, it's too hard to use, whatever) then go find some other hardware and some other software. Nobody is forcing you to use WinCE/PocketPC. If you are so in love with the software, then let that override your opinion of the hardware. Unfortunetly for you the economies of scale work better for tightly integrated products/services than it does for a "Chinese Menu" approach that allows you to customize on a hundred different options.

Re:Open == more devices

[sangreal66]

I don't know where you got the idea that all PocketPCs are clones of each other. Yes, Microsoft (used to) limit the screen size and has a few other restrictions, but it is not nearly as extreme as you suggest. Even just amongst HP there is a lot of variation accross the models. Just look at the new HX4700 which has a touchpad (with full cursor functionality, not just a 'touch wheel') a drastic departure from the standard d-pad. The Asus MyPals, Dell Axims and Toshiba PocketPCs all have their own unique feel/design. Just because there are a few IPAQ clones out there doesn't mean it is dictated by Microsoft.

I love my AIM Client

[Paulrothrock]

I use Adium.

I call Bull$hit

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the author didn't note the large amount of shares (AOL) Time Warner owns in Google. Google shares is one of the reasons why the AOL division is turning a profit again. Time Warner won't let Google destroy AOL's most popular feature. If Google launches its own IM service, it will be based upon AIM just like Apple's iChat is.

The Lynxpro

google can succeed in IM just as with search

[flacco]

leveraging open source software, google offered excellent, browser-agnostic search with a minimum of clutter and advertising.

over the long term, this can be the same formula for success in IM. there is inertia and critical mass to overcom re: existing IM services, but the jabber technology, being free/open, and striving for interoperability with other protocols for its own sake instead of some strategic market share move, has a lot to offer.

i recently turned on a co-worker's windows pc, and practically got dizzy when the advertisement-laden AOL signon thing came up.

indiatimes messenger

[harlemjoe]

http://messenger.indiatimes.com/
the indiatimes messenger (though bloated and malware in itself) somehow manages to successfully log you on to the indiatimes network, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and AOL.

It's a nice workaround though the client is quite ugly. The developers are geodesic software... I don't know Trillian's capabilities but this software bridges all IM networks quite successfully.

we could do it in the wink of an eye

[Anonymous Coward]

its all goo until we tell you something else.

Google/AOL Relationship

[Celt]

Given Google and AOL seem to have a nice little relationship going on, whats to stop AOL allow Google to use its network or a modified AOLIM client?
Would be alot of fun but then again competition laws may stop that.

In the end if Google do start a Im client GIM :P they'd blow MSN out of the water, after all 1GB GMail, IM and Search all under one using a very well known brand name thats also trusted by the majority of people on the net (compared to MS)
Let the fun times role! :)

File Transfer from behind NAT

[grasshoppa]

Actually, there is a spec in jabber that allows for this, and further, there is a working client out there: psi.

"Jabber Quality " or "I need a new jabber client

[ShadowBottle]

You need a better client. Jabber networks don't alert when you remove a buddy. I've been using jabber for about 4 years now and have never seen this occur. As far as I know MSN or maybe messenger are the only two messenger networks that do this. Just because you're connecting to these networks with a client that supports jabber doesn't mean that its all jabbers fault etc etc.

Your little sister will switch, too. (Re:Wha?)

[otisg]

Does your little sister still use AltaVista, Excite, WebCrawler, or Hotbot or Lycos or Northern Light or WebTop for her web searches?

Most likely not - she has switched to either Google or AlltheWeb or Teoma or WiseNut. Why wouldn't she switch to a better IM network/client then?

Remember, the only constant is change.

Re:Your little sister will switch, too. (Re:Wha?)

[ErikZ]

Probably the same reason I have 3 different clients. Because none of my friends who use those clients will change.

I still don't get why Yahoo has stopped working under GAIM.

Re:Your little sister will switch, too. (Re:Wha?)

[thephotoman]

Update to 0.81. That'll solve your problems. Seriously. They had to do some re-programming on the Y!M side because Yahoo changed its coding or something in order to lock out third party clients. 0.81 has taken care of the problem.

Hello? Google already owns an IM client.

[Elwood P Dowd]

Google owns Hello. This is a photo-oriented IM client that they got along with Picasa, the (excellent) iPhoto knockoff.

I hope everyone who just said Google doesn't care about IM kicks themself in the head. You dumbasses.

Hello is pretty, & it works with Blogger & Picasa. It is good Windows software, which is all that Google seems to be interested in for the desktop.

Re:Hello? Google already owns an IM client.

[otis wildflower]

So what cross-platform IM standard does it support?

Where can I download the Linux or Java version?

Or the GAIM/Kopete/insert-your-imofchoice-here plugin?

Does it integrate with gmail?

Re:Hello? Google already owns an IM client.

[Elwood P Dowd]

Where can I download the Linux or Java version?

Just right click on the Google DeskBar for Gnome.

Re: all the better to see you with, my dear

[Jonny Cat]

What genius it would be to lure the masses into the ultimate information trap.

The trapdoor slams when they have everything they need to control you... the Walmart of the web.

I'm not saying its going to happen. However, us paranoid (for medicinal purposes, of course) civilians have our eyes peeled.

Interesting speculation on a possiblity...

[Anita Coney]

If we're in the mood for merely speculating on mere possiblities, how about speculating on the possibility that the Matrix was NOT a movie but was a message from Zion to prepare us for the coming war!

Mirabilis vs. AOL

[Savet Hegar]

Back when ICQ was owned by Mirabilis, it was a quality program with little bloat. As soon as AOL bought it, it came standard with a ton of "features" that the average user never uses, nor would ever want to use.

I realize there is an ICQ lite now, and I haven't tried it recently, but when I did try it, it was too lite. Almost to the point of Windows XP "Starter Edition".

Re: Mirabilis vs. AOL

[FourLizards]

Don't forget about Trillian's support for ICQ. I still log in to ICQ using Trillian, but none of my old contacts are ever online.

AIM doesn't have to be that cluttered...

[Netaku]

Either use a third-party client, like GAIM or whatever your tastes are, or if you need to be able to d/c, download AIMutation and disable the ads and buttons and whatnot. My AIM window is pretty much just the buddy list thanks to AIMutaiton.

Google already has an IM client and Protocol !!!

[bobwyman]

Google recently bought Hello.com and has been supporting its instant messaging protocol, clients, etc. ever since the purchase. Hello's focus today is on Instant Messaging between people who share pictures, but they could open it up to a wider audience any time they wanted to. Thus, GOOGLE already has an IM client and protocol. As far as I know, the protocol is closed.

To see an example of Google/Hello IM Chatting, see: Google Chat

The question isn't whether or not Google should "adopt" XMPP, rather, the question is whether they should "change to it." My hope is that they will dump their proprietary system and switch to the XMPP IETF open standard as soon as possible.

bob wyman

I think the article misses an important point.

[tigerknight]

Who says that because you have an AIM ID that you have to use the aol client?

Trillian accesses the AIM network and and adds more options, to my knowledge. I don't remember seeing 'Secure IM' in AIM's preferences for example.

Things like that. I think the IM market is a bit flooded as it is without having another to compete - even if it was the badass of them all. People like my mom and dad aren't going to switch away from AIM because it's learning something new and is intimidating.

Trillian is the most useful program out there for IM's because you don't need 5 IM clients installed anymore (not even counting IRC) to chat.

The savvy people will use trillian and have connections to everything they have friends on, those that aren't will stay attached to their favorite clients.

Re:I think the article misses an important point.

[DrVxD]

I used Trillian for a while, and whilst the paid-for version has slightly better functionality than Gaim, in my experience Gaim is far more stable. (And, in a desperate attempt to stay on topic, in addition to ICQ/MSN/AIM Gaim also supports Jabber. (IIRC, Trillian can support Jabber, but I never managed to get it working). And, since this is slashdot, did I mention that Gaim is open source?

The really savvy people use Gaim :)

... and your point is?

[arhar]

Will they switch? Sure they will. People switch because they're lemmings. Look at MSN. I guarantee most of the people I know on MSN only got it because somebody else they knew was on it, who got it because somebody else was on it...

So most people went on the IM service because someone they knew was on it. I fail to see what's wrong with this. What's the point of using an IM service if you have no one to talk to?

"Hey look at me, I'm so cool! I'm using OpenGnuInstantLinuxBSDMessengerGPL ... if there was only anyone else on so I could test this 'send message' functionality.. someone ... anyone ... please?!

Re:... and your point is?

[black mariah]

OP is a tard. Just ignore him and anyone else that likes to describe people as 'lemmings' or, more likely, 'sheeple'. These dumbasses don't realize they're just parroting the same moronic bullshit someone else said first... exactly like the lemmings they supposedly despise.

Re:... and your point is?

[TheRaven64]

One of the nice features of Jabber is that you can communicate with users of other IM services using gateway transports. I currently use an MSN and ICQ transport for the few IM contacts I have that have not switched. Once you start saying to people `Oh, you can't use {feature} because you're not using Jabber,' they start to switch.

Apple is supporting Jabber

[HELLO.JPG]

Apple is already working on this.

You can now host your own iChat server. Instant Messaging serves as a vital means of communication for organizations of all sizes, so it's useful to deploy and run your own private and secure IM server. Based on the open source Jabber project, the new iChat server in Tiger Server lets your company protect its internal communications by defining its own namespace, and use SSL/TLS encryption to ensure privacy. The iChat server works with both the iChat client in Mac OS X Tiger and popular open source clients available for Windows, Linux and even PDAs.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/tiger/

Re:Apple is supporting Jabber

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the contributing patches back to the Jabber group or is this just a straight port of the existing free version with a fancy name on it (and of course, a gui for the textually challenged)?

Some problems...

[samrolken]

Yet, a context-sensitive text ad, just like those in Gmail, might prove to be both more valuable to advertisers and less obnoxious to users.
If people were freaking out about context-sensitive text ads in their email, just imagine the reaction to the plan to "scan" IM messages for advertising.

Re:Some problems...

[gnu-generation-one]

"If people were freaking out about context-sensitive text ads in their email, just imagine the reaction to the plan to "scan" IM messages for advertising."

Google competition #1: prepare suitable advertising messages for these

The new name is obvious....

[RobertKozak]

Google + Jabber = Gabber :-)

Re:The new name is obvious....

[DrVxD]

Nooo....

Google + Jabber = Goober :-)

Re:The new name is obvious....

[TeknoHog]

There's already a Gnome Jabber client called Gabber. Nevertheless it makes sense as the word means a 'buddy', among other things...

http://everything2.org/?node=gabber

They need to make it available over SSL! (443)

[TheCeltic]

If they use SSL (https), just think how useful it would be to those of us that get blocked by corporate firewalls (from using non http/https ports).

Public IM discussions indexed and searchable

[dotslash]

Google can leverage its search technology by logging "public" IM conversations and making them indexable. Users can pick if they want their chat room/IM conversation public and have everything indexed.

You could do an interview with someone, and have it captured and indexed. Or the IETF could hold a committe meetting in a public chat room, knowing that there is an instant public archive.

Someone searching might find a snippet of a conversation. From there, Google could provide the full thread by moving backwards or forwards from the snippet that was a hit.

Of course, most conversations would be private, but some might choose to have public discussions.
As long as it's not evil.

Re:Public IM discussions indexed and searchable

[Rob.Mathers]

It doesn't have to be public to be searchable. They could pull the same stuff they have with Gmail, where your conversation history (which most IM programs already keep) is searchable by you.

This is also where they could integrate their context based text ads. It would be a little much to have them in live IM chats (as well as add significant clutter to the interface), but having them in the search/history page wouldn't be a big deal.

The one requirement would be that you would have to store the history on their servers, but that seems like a fair tradeoff to me. You want to search (and keep a history independant of the workstation you're on) your messages? Then you have to have Google store it and show you the ads. Don't like it for whatever reason? Turn it off. Seems like a sweet deal to me.

GOE?

[flamingnight]

It would mean we're that much closer to this.

iMoogle

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you make that ichat compatible please!

Dear Google:

[oldosadmin]

Please do this!

Thanks, Geeks everywhere

Another Killer App....

[jrpascucci]

Just a thought...

If you take your tinfoil hats off for a bit, what would make a killer app would be to have chat channels (akin to IRC) searchable and indexable through google.

Obviously, Cybering and such stuff would make lame reading (ooh, baby), as would all the script kiddies and elite gamers talking trash, but in a reasonably large number of cases, there's stuff out there one might want to preserve for posterity.

I envision two mechanisms: 1) "Private chat" which would work like gmail, but save the resultant session so that the two could access it.

2) "Public Chat" would just log whatever's there in some location tagged with the name of the channel, for future reference.

Obviously, you wouldn't want to archive junk: no binaries, maybe have a lameness filter, and you would have to find some way around robo-spammers, who would "recite" the works of Shakespeare, except punctuated by ads for V14GR4.

The article's suggested name for the service

[Combuchan]

Joogle?

I could understand GIM and a whole host of other possible names for such a service, but Joogle--"Jewish Google (or Googling for Jews)" just seems like one of those things that wouldn't pass the marketroid litmus test.

I'd suggest Messoogle but then people might sign up thinking they'd be able to strike a conversation up with the Messiah.

Re:The article's suggested name for the service

[geekoid]

I would think moogle would make sense.

MODS: WHAT THE HELL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this a troll?

Re:MODS: WHAT THE HELL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously anyone that doesn't join the google/anti-AOL/anti-MS circle jerk is a troll. No, not really, but judging by the way the n00b mods moderate, that's how it works on Slashdot these days.

Re:testing

[Anonymous Coward]

a toy language like PERL

Nigger please.

Slashdot trolling

[mpcooke3]

My god there is almot a whole book written on the subject!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_p he nomena

You're right.

[sethadam1]

There's no marketing department on Earth - well, at least in the US - who would put their stamp of approval on Joogle, which is way too Jewish sounding.

I'd think GIM is the way to go too. Plus, it continues the Gmail paradigm.

Google,

[Vadim Makarov]

your next evil monopoly (expanding into other markets using its leverage in the main product).

Maybe not exactly *that* name, but similar

[katz]

Perhaps this link is what you're describing. It's a site where you can look up Jewish celebrities. It's a spoof on Yahoo.

Roey

Gabber.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah

Re:Display libraries

[Bastian]

Qt, GTK+, OpenSTEP (aka GNUStep aka Cocoa), wxWindows, various Java libraries, XUL, ParaGUI, FOX, hell, you can use GLUT if you want.

Cross-platform GUI libraries don't excite me.

retarded

[Suriel]

his idea is pretty retarded. there is a reason jabber never took off... if google did test the waters in instant messanging, it would be on a proprietary protocol... i played around with the jabber SDK, and i wasn't impressed in the least.

Anything

[BCW2]

Using open source to take money from the wallets at M$ and AOL just has to be a good thing. I'm sure the guys at Google can produce a killer app. They have proved capable of standing up to M$ so far. I hope they don't try to expand too fast like all the dot bombs did.

Google and IM don't mix

[Anonymous Coward]

Google provides searching services that are easier to use and more accurate then the competition (web, email, news, froogle, etc).

If they did, they'd include their revenue model in it as well - relevant text ads. While there could be benefits (show top news or popular pages for a link posted in the chat) it would be just as obtrusive.

Besides, if they did introduce an IM client, they'd create their own, along with the protocol, rather than use Jabber or other open source protocol.

The person who wrote the article wants his hero (Google) to introduce an IM client since his AIM is too cluttered. He just needs to switch to GAIM or other adless client. Case closed.

We use Jabber (Exodus) at our company to link our six offices, along with key contacts at a few of our largest clients. It can often save time rather than emailing or phoning the person. I also like knowing who is and isn't available, thereby eliminating the need to call or email if the person is away.

My preference is for MSN Messenger, so I wouldn't switch just because Google slapped its name on it.

The secret to IM

[Lelon]

Can google maintain 100% spam free IM like AIM has? I'm growing more tired of AIM with every update, and still no decent end-to-end encryption. But I'll take it over spam-filled ICQ any day of the week.

The more people there are who can add features...

[Chris Acheson]

...the more likely it is that someone will come up with something really cool. If you're not a programmer, you still benefit from other people having the ability to modify the code (or create their own clients, in this case).

Hushmail Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read about Hushmail's free secure IM program but I've never used it. Anyone can sign up for a free Hushmail e-mail account and check out the secure IM program. Last time I checked the Hushmail IM program, which uses encryption, was for Windows, but maybe they have a client for *nix.. if not one could always try WINE..

Just thought I'd mention this in case no one at /. was familiar with it, FWIW YMMV.

Re:Hushmail Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[benna]

The problem with it is it doesn't have ANY features. You have your contact list and you can double click on an email address to message them. The message window consists of a send botton, a place to type, and a window with what has been said. Thats the entire program.

Re:Hushmail Re:Jabber great because of encryption

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

There's also SILC, an encrypted replacement for IRC.

Google already has an IM platform

[duffbeer703]

Hello from Picasa

Re:Google already has an IM platform

[otis wildflower]

?

Picasa is an iPhoto clone...

easy

[geekoid]

google has great branding.
I mean, who needs another web email company? yet gmail is becoming very popular.
WHat we need, as concumers, is a base IM protocol that all IMs use. You can buildon otp of it, but always maintain compatibility with the base functionality.
Now you can have a competitive market, and not lock people out.
Google might have the market strength for that, and then we can stop trying to convince are friends to use what we use, and not to worry about there other friends IM.

Re:Display libraries

[GregChant]

OpenSTEP (aka GNUStep aka Cocoa

Pet peeve here: while both are based on OpenStep and both use Objective-C, GNUStep and Cocoa are not identical. They use two different formats for Interface files, the frameworks have gone two different directions after over ten years of being forked, and GNUStep, in my humble opinion, is a much shoddier version of Cocoa (due to lack of proper development I gather)

Come on

[nwbvt]

Even if Google did make such a service (and I know of no reason to believe they are), it would take a lot more than Google's name brand to sell it. The problem with an instant messaging client is not only do you have to switch, but so do all your friends.

Case in point, MS is likely the most powerful company today (and to all you mod nazis who will -1 Troll anyone who says something decent about MS, I said powerful, not best), yet has their instant messaging client reached near the popularity of aim's? Even with it integrated into the most popular desktop operating system they still cannot beat aim. Why? Aim got there first, and no one is willing to change.

Open standards and instant messaging

[Wise Dragon]

Standard-based IM is all well and good for us, the technical elite. We don't want to run multiple IM clients to communicate with all of our friends. It's a nuisance, frankly. Have any of you used Yahoo Instant Messenger lately? They have a lot of new features that make it fun to use. IMvironments are cute little chat applets that allow for different, fun, styles of communication. So also does the ever expanding list of emoticons, translated to icons of course. Audibles are fun to play with, in a cartoonish way. Where is jabber? Still doing IRC-style communication in a window. Plain-jane, ho-hum, boring, boring, boring. Suitable for business, and I use it for that. I don't have the other instant messengers because nobody I care about uses them. No doubt there is a similar bells and whistles arms race going on on them. But where are the bells and whistles in jabber? My wife complains that I can't load an imvironment in GAIM.

There's something to be said for changing the protocol and client at your whim to add fun and interesting modes of communication.

Market Share.

[jelwell]

From a recent C|Net article about Yahoo!'s Instant Messaging client:

"According to research firm Nielsen/NetRatings, about 17 million people, or 12 percent of the Net population, actively used Yahoo Messenger in November. It trails MSN with 27 million users, and market leader AOL with 28 million users. ICQ and Trillian follow the three, serving only a fraction of their users."

So AIM is still on top, with MSN behind it. It should be noted that ICQ is owned by AOL and is compatible with AIM - so it's marketshare reflects the install base of the ICQ application, not the number of users. Even Apple's iChat can talk to ICQ users.

Joseph Elwell.

yeah but think about it

[johnjones]

you would want everything crypto and locked in because you want to sell adverts that people pay for...
(you could give developers a key and allow access like this)

why serve up an advert if its not relevent to the user ?

google won't why not ? because the advertisers(money people want to have a good return rate on money spent thats why google is so great because they get a great conversion betwen ad and sale because it targets people who are intrested)

the ads would be placed in coversation like they are in coversations(thread/email) in gmail

why do voip and jabber ?
sip has a msg built in so why not just use this to allow expand in the future...
how about Video on demand and Digital Video recoder allowing custom adverts between shows tailored to the user this is the future...

just speculating on the possibility...

regards

john jones

Re:yeah but think about it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, this may come off as harsh, but have you ever heard of "sentences"?

The Problem with Jabber

[Billobob]

Is that it doesn't have wide support many features which geeks see as "useless", such as webcams, good voice chat, etc. The truth is that until Jabber has all the flashy features that the other networks have, it doesn't stand a chance vs AIM or MSN.

good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

hope autopr0n gets back up (pun very much intended) soon; it's(was) the shit

Re:good luck

[wolrahnaes]

"hope autopr0n gets back up (pun very much intended) soon; it's(was) the shit"

QFT

I miss autopr0n :(

Re:Display libraries

[Bastian]

While this is true, they are still similar enough that you can put together a basic GUI program that will work on both. No, you don't get to use serialised objects, but if you really want to you can use them as a cross-platform API.

Jabber needs to have port 5222 open

[Anonymous Coward]

I developed an IM client using the jabber protocol in 2001 using Macromedia Director. It was pretty cool but 9/11 caused the client to hesitate on releasing the product. The main issues I have been confronted with when demoing the client is that most corporate users I have encountered don't leave port 5222 open.

Major companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because alongside a "major" company like Google, those little upstarts AOL and Microsoft won't stand a chance.

Dumbass.

why google?

[binarybum]

I'm hardly convinced by this article that Google plays any significant role in this concept. the 'they can do it because they're big and popular' logic could really extend to just about anything that has to do with searching or communication. There already are great clients like trillian, and anyone that took the time to make a better one would have a pretty decent shot of having it go mainstream if it simply performed better in every way than AIM. The great thing about the internet is that a guy like this can get more hits on his website than many major corporations - and that's without a product!
screw "don't be evil"
don't be a sucker.
Google is not in that much better a position to implement an AIM killer than you or I.

As long as it's ad-free

[Jeff85]

I'd use a Google IM client.

AIM is starting to get on my nerves... the latest version seem to include IE pop-ups. I only use Mozilla, and I'm sure the pop up is caused by AIM because the pop up correlates with the ad displayed on the AIM buddy list. I haven't heard any lately, but sometimes AIM has played audio ads as well, which is particularly annoying when I'm trying to listen to music.

I guess my other prerequisite for me switching would be compatibility with AIM since all my friends currently use AIM.

So if Google someday creates an ad-free, competitor-compatible IM client, I'd be all over it.

AIM bitching

[inkedmn]

IM'ing became a phenomenon because of AOL, that's just a fact. I still use AIM as my primary means of IM (though I have accounts with all the major providers). If you don't like AOL's client program, there are *several* alternatives (and no, trillian isn't the best - far from it actually). The only thing a google instant messenger service would do is split Jabber's userbase, since only geeks would use it (or switch to it from AIM).

All the users at my office use AIM and it works just fine for them. Thinking everybody will switch just because it starts with a G is simply foolish.

Re:AIM bitching

[Anonymous Coward]

You remind me... why do all us geeks google when there is dmoz?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wishful thinking MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent UP!!

Not a good Idea

[mmatloob]

A GIM (Google Instant Messenger) session

Chat Session Google Ads
A> Hello. Buy greeting cards!

B> How much of Have us do your
your homework homework for $5!!!
Have you done? ...

Id be more interested in a personal data manager

[jakoz]

This is interesting if you consider what should be their next step... a personal data manager and start page.

Think about it... if you could combine all your calendar, to-do list, diary, notes, customised start page etc with Gmail, a Google IM, the main Google search, Google news, and Google data handling performance you'd be laughing.

You could then essentially have a mobile desktop. I'd sure be using it... Google build things the way I like them.

Not a good Idea

[mmatloob]

A GIM (Google Instant Messenger) session
Chat Session Google Ads

A> Hello. Buy greeting cards!

B> How much of Have us do your
your homework homework for $5!!!
Have you done?

...

mod parent up!

[mrklin]

Hello is great and its integration into Picasa and Blogger is just amazing.

Why is Hello so great? Sometimes when you IM a person, you want to do more than just exchanging plain text (not that there is something wrong with that!) i.e. you may want to share with the person what you did today, what you had for lunch, whom did you meet and so on. With phone/digital/web cameras, this is infinitely possible.

In addition, exchanging photos allows a more personal communication without using webcams which has its own list of pros (porn!) and cons (bandwidth, quality, and sometimes you are not just ready to see another person).

Hello is not perfect, of course. It has no other platform support except for Windows. No interoperatability to other IM clients. But it is simple to use and uncluttered, just like the other Google products.

Already Discussed

[sik0fewl]

Google using Jabber for IM has already been discussed on some slashdot (in comments): http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=112190&cid=952 4999

Unforunately, I was unable to find the other thread I mentioned in the post. Maybe a subscriber can find it in my post history?

I forget if I was the one who originally brought it up or not, but the idea of Google using Jabber for IM, and its benefits, was definitely brought up on slashdot first.

It's true

[aussie_a]

You can even sign up with fake e-mail addresses, such as John@John.com or Bill@thisisntreal.com whatever you want ;)

You forgot something important:

[roman_mir]

If Google made a MMORPG it would rule the earth! - In Japan.

If Google made a Linux distribution with Spotlight-like search, it would rule the earth! - In Japan.

If Google let me host all my MP3's it would rule the earth! - In Japan.

that works

[twitter]

I like it. A quick search shows it bears fruit. Gibba Jabber, awesome name.

Relatively Easy Secruity.

[twitter]

How could we secure such a system?

Much more easily than M$ or AOL? Sure, anyone dumb enough to still be running Windoze has zero expectation of privacy, security, dignity and stability regardless of services used. The rest of us can have end to end encryption via jabber and be more sure that we are not being keylogged.

Real security comes in steps and is a never ending process:

1. Know what you want to gaurd and only let people who need it use it.
2. Eliminate weak links, such as insecure OS access to such information.
3. Continue to monitor your important material and watch for unusual activity.

That is all.

Re:Relatively Easy Secruity.

[flibberdi]

I wonder if anyone except companies need encryption? I for one dont care too much, I dont mind anyone reading what I am typing in a IM session... mind you, I used to have ssl setup with jabber, but I didn't care to do it last time I changed computer. I do icq/irc chat over ssh (mobile ssh client) but thats not end to end... P.S I changed Threshold to "1", most post by AC are useless anyway...

Multiple Services in a Nice Little Package

[merikus]

After reading a number of comments here, it seems many people (including myself) agree that the major problem GoogleIM faces is that if all your friends use ServiceX, you are basically forced to use ServiceX as well.

The answer to this situation, IMHO, is for Google to release an IM program which has seamless integration with other IM services. This is offered in many third party IM applications, but a big Google brand on an application which could juggle multiple IM systems might just be enough to get people to use Google's application--which, of course, would require you to sign up for GoogleIM at download.

It would be a slow process of conversion, but if Google starts out with seamless integration, I think they have a chance of converting a significant number of users within a year.

Re:Multiple Services in a Nice Little Package

[shufler]

This is what Microsoft did with early versions of MSN Messenger.

They used AOL's network.

This resulted in AOL explicitly blocking them from using it. And Microsoft went and deployed their own servers and whatnot.

Trillian

[ms1234]

No one seems to be talking about Trillian (or maybe I missed something) which binds together msn, ircq, yahoo and irc.

It's the smiley stupid!

[nemeosis]

The smileys on AIM look better. =) =P =/

Google already has an instant messenger

[ElliotLee]

When they acquired Picasa, they also got Picasa Hello, which is now effectively Google Hello.

What about their Google Philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html states in 2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat. With the largest research group in the world focused exclusively on solving search problems,...

Wouldn't that make them evil?

IM protocal pointlless...

[Jace of Fuse!]

Nearly everyone has at least one name in all of the services, and they still only use one service (the one most of their friends use).

An IM protocal is only as important to someone as the need to keep in touch with the people they know (who use such things).

When it comes to AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Y!M they're really all not that much different, so I use Trillian Pro (registered). My ICQ number is 6 digits. :)

What really matters to a lot of people who actually chat is the chat features of these clients.

IRC of course being the most opened, it has it's obvious problems though many people it enough to cope with them.

ICQ's chat has always and still sucks.

AIM's chat has very few selectable rooms of interest and entering them results in joining a chat room with about 5893493847 bots and 2 live people that don't know how to say anything but "ASL".

MSN's chat isn't all that great either, and most of the people I do know who generally use it at all complain about it most of the time.

The last remaining one worth mentioning then would be Yahoo chatrooms. Yahoo chat rooms have the most topics, including some divided by geographic location. They support voice in the room (a real plus) and though the bots are bad they're easily spotted.

Overall, I can honestly say I think Yahoo's chat rooms are the best of the major services though they too have serious problems. For starters, you almost HAVE to use a 3rd party client such as YahElite (Only available for Windows, but runs in Wine just fine) to stay safe from skript-kiddie boot-codes. And you will get private messages from tons of bots. Most importantly though, creating private rooms will not grant the person who created the room any kind of special room privileges so the rooms go mostly unmoderated. For some people this might be undesirable.

That's why this whole thing has been so high on my mind lately. Because I do like to chat and as I see it none of the chat services are perfect.

What's needed is a chat service that...

1. Is free or inexpensive.
2. Is opened (and possibly opened source at both the server and client levels).
3. Supports voice and webcams.
4. Supports user level moderation and room creation.
5. Supports a structured and oragnized listing of the rooms (similar to Yahoo's) to better bring together people that desire chat on specific subjects. (IRC's ungodly long list of seemingly random rooms just never really has cut it).
6. Is safe from exploits and boots.
7. Is cross platform.
8. Doesn't suck.

I have a lot of ideas on how a service like this could be done, but how to do it without either ungodly amounts of capitol or without making the system expensive to users is something I often ponder.

Even starting an opened source project to do this has the major issue of running the master servers for the service, something that a free and opened source project probably couldn't afford to do for long if the service ever got popular.

Chat is still a largely unsatisfied niche, since nobody has really done it right. Instant messages are so 90's. Someone needs to take chat to the next level, and Google could do it if they gave it some thought.

and embedded platform support

[Ba3r]

.. for instance most mobile phones these days can send AOL instant messages. This continuity between desktop, laptop, and mobile phone in an instant messaging system is crucial. If google could somehow get on board with some mobile phone manufacturers, they would have a big leg up.

Miranda IM

[ttys00]

I use Miranda. I like the interface, it uses plugins for protocols so everything is supported, it doesn't chew down loads of memory, and its released under the GPL. I stick with version 0.3.2 though, because I don't like the icons in newer versions.

Yes, its Windows-only, but most of you are using Windows right now anyway.

better call it Gimme

[bramez]

like in "gimme the money". They went IPO, remember?

Good Business, but...

[General_Tso]

If Google wants to hock more ads, it's a good business idea. But, and I'm sure this is redundant, don't we all want fewer protocols already...

ichat?

[minus_273]

"If Jabber was supported by a major company like Google, it could dominate over proprietary services such as AIM or MSN"

you mean like ichat?

One can dream..

[Rockburn]

Personally, I'd love to this happen. Google > AIM, any day.

Ease of change

[SeanDuggan]

Simple. It's amazingly easy to change search engines. You just type a different name into the address bar. If you feel like it, you try several different search engines in succession. There's no real commitment and no personal settings to move over. (This has changed a little in these days of search bars, but not that much, really.) In contrast, a new IM client requires downloading software, re-installing it, setting one's user preferences again, and often rebuilding one's friend list and away messages. (The rebuilding is, in my opinion, actually generally for the best to clear out the cruft accounts of people who never get online anymore, but that's another matter) Gaim does the best of the lot IMNSHO, in that it imports your contact lists and away messages and is reasonably transparent in usage, but even there, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make the switch. And at that, you lose some functionality of extra features such as video, games, and whiteboards.

Google's next Gchat logo

[Anonymous Coward]

Be prepared for Google's next Gchat service ;)
http://www.auriance.com/gchat.png/

Here's the link

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, here's the link: http://www.auriance.com/gchat.png

google could work their magic....

[mbennis]

In helping me searching for my friends and new ones.

So now Google owns you

[lcsjk]

If Google is big enough to run most of the others out of existence, then Google will be in the position to dictate everything about instant messaging, and its just a matter of time before it turns into an unwanted, undesirable "control" of your messaging service. Ad pushing and maybe even a "pay for" special service might be a part sometime.

Windows in 2001 vs Windows in 2004

[danielsfca2]

> The shell in Windows sucked a couple of years ago (it might still - haven't used it).

Well, since there hasn't been a substantive update to Windows in longer than that, and won't be for another, what was it, two years?...I'm guessing the shell still sucks.

Interoperability - spam? Or no connection?

[danielsfca2]

What's humorous is that the only 2nd-generation (1st-gen was ICQ, and perhaps pre-AIM AOL Buddy List) instant messenger platform I've used that's ever given me significant spam ("spim," right?) is Yahoo! Messenger. Also the one who keeps thrashing violently to block out third-party clients. (Die, Yahoo. Die now and save us all a lot of annoyance.) So I'd suspect that the "supports interoperability" quality has no connection to the "fosters spammers" quality.

home AIM server?

[danielsfca2]

That was SOOOOO cool. If someone ever does that, I'm so there. Too bad I'm not capable of writing it either.

-Dan

Re:"Jabber Quality " or "I need a new jabber clien

[Nick of NSTime]

MSN Messenger does not alert contacts when you boot them.

To answer your question, I am using Jabber Messenger 2.7.4.46. Copyright Jabber, Inc. Take a look at their website.

Google Already has IM...

[Juiblex]

... and it is called Hello! Go check it out!

Google and a trademark search?

[Pan T. Hose]

Why bother doing a trademark search? I'm guessing they're going to call it GAIM

Very true, Google is not very smart with their trademarks. I always said Google should have asked Ernst Gräfenberg for permission before starting to use the name "G-mail." They didn't listen to me, so they're in trouble now. They asked for it if you ask me.