Slashdot Mirror
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."
"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.
Get your own free personal location tracker
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...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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.
Try Miranda. a very nice open source multi IM protocol client. Including Jabber, of course.
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.
Just use GAIM and you can use all the major protocals, including AIM, MSM, and Jabber.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
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.
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 :-)
Yes, I am a
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).
Please don't read my sig.
do you mean something like this.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.
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.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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.
Jabber CAN talk to AIM.
-insert a witty something-
Please do this!
Thanks, Geeks everywhere
Jay | http://oldos.org
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
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
(I know they could use Gtk, but why torture us?)
Torture how? By offering a clean, usable interface instead of a bloated, flashy one?
?
Picasa is an iPhoto clone...
> 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.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
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.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
When they acquired Picasa, they also got Picasa Hello, which is now effectively Google Hello.
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.
> 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.