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Google Talk Claims Openness, Lacks S2S Support
rm writes "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget quite well sums up the disappointment in Google Talk among many Jabber users, caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support: '...Google has uncharacteristically missed the real strength of the Jabber design. Despite all their self-congratulation about open communications they've only embraced the smaller, less important aspect of the Jabber openness.'"
In that case you may want to try MSN. It allows non-hotmail e-mail addresses (in fact, it allowed invalid e-mail addresses, or at least did back in 2000).
Their client may not run on Linux yet but you can use Google Talk on Linux using gAIM or another Jabber complient client: http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html
From the google talk About page
1. What is "service choice" and how does Google Talk enable it?
Service choice is something you have with email and, for the most part, with your regular phone service today. This means that regardless of whom you choose as your email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, your school or ISP, etc), you can email anyone who is using another service provider. The same applies to phone service. You can call someone even if they do not use the same phone company as you do. This allows you to choose your service provider based on other more important factors, such as features, quality of service, and price, while still being able to talk to anyone you want.
Unfortunately, the same is not true with most popular IM and VOIP networks today. If the people you want to talk to are all on different IM/VOIP services, you need to sign up for an account on each service and connect to each service to talk to them.
We plan to partner with other willing service providers to enable federation of our services. This means that a user on one service can communicate with users on another service without needing to sign up for, or sign in with, each service.
and
1. What is "platform choice" and how does Google Talk enable it?
Platform choice means that you can connect to our service using the operating system and device of your choice. Google Talk enables platform choice by letting users of other operating systems connect to the Google Talk service using other IM clients.
I thingk that would qualifies for self-congratulation about open communications enabeling de s2s for talk would enable service coice at least for IM and hey it might still happen I mean it *is* still in beta
At least for the Mac, the sad truth is that there is already a native, free, supported, Jabber compatible chat program provided by Apple.
:)
No such luck on Windows
I suspect Linux has a similar program too.
So this was the case of 'upgrading' the Windows OS to match everyone else
GPL Deconstructed
"Of course it is, Google has stocks now, things have changed, along with Google. You shouldn't act so surprised, what with everyone here saying Google will change once it offers stock."
So really nothing has changed then. Google has always had stock and has always wanted to make money. The only difference is that you and I can buy it now.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
My comment:
And got the reply:
WTF? Thats not what I asked, was it?
I seriously hope they'll add this... They're all about interoperability, but they'll only talk to their VOIP partners.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Leaders in the jabber community have made it fairly clear that s2s support just hasn't been coded yet. Its on its way.
I am positive that they are trying to figure out how to control SPAM that would happen if they opened up the S2S portion of their server.
I know that i'll be modded down for an unfunny comment to your witty remark... but GTalk doesn't even provide emoticons...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Why didn't they release an os X port?
It's a beta already! They announced the OS X client, just wait a bit. Heck, the Windows client looks like it was written over a long weekend. I expect we'll see great improvements to it, as well as more platforms supported.
[...] using gAIM [...]
;)
Gah! It's 'Gaim', not 'gAIM'! Are you trying to get somebody sued!?
"abuse" is debatable, but technically it was when developers began using the client-side code that Google uses, on their own sites, while interfacing with the google maps servers to use resources the servers were originally just providing to the google maps website. This was possible because Google cannot restrict access to the servers to their own website because it's actually the browser that makes the connections, not the website. (sorry for the run-on)
Their solution was to create a vastly easier to use API, well-documented and unobfuscated, costing websites only the limit of a finite (large, can't remember it at the moment) number of accesses per day.
Google Web Search: http://www.google.com/
Google Image Search: http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q=
Google Sets: http://labs.google.com/sets
Google Compute: http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html
I'm sure there are others as well.
You could use OTR. Yes, it's primarily intended for AIM, but the GAIM plugin at least seems to work with all underlying protocols, so if you and the one you want to talk to both use GAIM (or, if you're using OS X, Adium X, which IIRC has native support for OTR), you can use it on Google Talk, too.
For those who can't / don't want to use GAIM (or Adium X), they have an AIM proxy server. I imagine that it wouldn't be impossible to do similar proxies for other protocols as well.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Without the ability to verify the credibility of a source (including editorials, and the people who write them) the information is still worthless.
:-)
Ah, I see your point. However, what makes blogs any different than the articles published in something like JDJ? The only credentials these people give are the blurbs that they supply to the magazine. For all you know, they could be making up their PHD or 50 books published. And even if they aren't you have no method of validating the quality of their previous works.
Even more difficult is that the general populace often ignores those who actually have credentials and place their faith in someone who doesn't. Case in point, when Nader declared Plutonium "the most toxic substance in existance." He has no credibility behind those statements, but he is believed over the scientists and engineers who *do* have credentials.
So it is a difficult situation. As a result, bloggers tend to rely on something more important than credentials: Reputation.
Reputation can be built a variety of ways. Not the least of which is by consistently sharing a valid and intelligent opinion.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There's their client, and there's their servers.
I have been led to believe that their client does not support file transfer at this time.
I don't use their client. I use iChat.
Using iChat, logging into their jabber network, I can't transfer files to people using Google's client. But I can transfer them to people using Adium. I've done it.
Their server supports file transfer with no problem, they just have to add it to their client. In the meantime, just use another client. (I'd gladly give up voice/video to get file transfer -- I use IM file transfer to get my job done, while for me voice/video is just a fun toy.)
When was the last time you used gmail?
n t.forms;for(i=0;i
It started supporting html mail months ago... There was even a hidden boolean javascript value that lets you edit html mail inline... I don't remember if that is still valid.... I have a bookmarklet in firefox
the code was: javascript:function%20H(w){var%20i,c,h,f=w.docume
It doesn't seem to do anything anymore, but now there is that rich text editor on the page which lets you put html in... albeit not handcoded html.
Gravity Sucks
Well, from the FAQ on Google talk page you can read:
"4. What other communication services will you federate with?
We look forward to federating with any service provider who shares our belief in enabling user choice and open communications. We do believe, however, that it is important to balance openness with ensuring that we maintain a safe and reliable service that protects user privacy and blocks spam and other abuses."
They will be open, but in a slow way and only if your server can be trusted!
I'm curious what attributes you'd expect to see in a "more thoughtful" statement that don't exist in what I wrote.
I assure you, I wrote to be read and I spent quite a bit of time attempting to make a point via a coherent argument. Perhaps I failed at that endeavor, but judging from the bulk of the feedback I've gotten it looks like I succeeded on at least some level.
In any event, in that you've not chosen to read the article this thread is beyond a doubt an even greater waste of everybody's time.
First a fairly standard reply:
Thank you for your input on open communications. We appreciate your thoughts on how Google can build a communications network that is open, promotes user choice, and protects consumers' rights. While we may not be able to respond directly to all feedback, we do appreciate your input, and it will be taken into account as we do our part to help promote open communications.
If you've expressed interest in federating your service with the Google Talk service, we will respond to you shortly.
Sincerely,
The Google Talk Team
After that I got a not so standard and more interesting one, I have contacted as a company I have that gives XMPP service hosting, and this is what I got:
Hello MyNameHere,
Thanks for your interest in federating with the Google Talk service. While this is not something that is enabled today with our beta service, we hope to enable it shortly.
When we have more information to share, it will be posted to http://www.google.com/talk/developer.html.
I'll also follow up again on this mail with details when we have them.
Regards,
The Google Talk Team
So I think that all depends on what Google understands as "shortly".
Google has a feedback form for the Google Talk service. We can rant here all day on Slashdot, but we're not going to get anywhere. Spend a few minutes out of your day to send some constructive feedback. I just did. Maybe we'll get the functionality we want.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Common emoticons are highlighted in blue, including but possibly not limited to:
:-)
:-(
:-P
:-O
:-D
;-)
:'-(
:-x
:-|
(and the variations without the 'nose')
Jabber uses a bidirectional presence subscription model. You ask to subscribe to someone's presence, they must approve the request before they will be notified of you logging on/off. But that doesn't entitle you to seeing their presence, you must in turn request to subscribe to their presence. I believe it is a per user option to choose whether or not the server will deliver messages to you from people who do not subscribe to your presence. Your roster is technically just a list of presenece subscriptions and which direction the subscriptions flow.
I don't complain about them because AOL or MSN's services don't feign 'openness' or customer choice and freedom to attract users. Google can sit around and make proprietary junk all day long for all I care, but spewing BS about how open free and good it all is -- that is garbage!
It's nice that they have chosen to use jabber, and I bet their bottom line is eventually going to benefit from not having to maintain a wide breadth of clients or worry about constructing their own protocol from scratch -- but you know AOL could switch to XMPP too and it wouldn't make their service any better. See, the protocol is not the thing, it's the implementation of the sstandard, and the XMPP standard includes s2s message transports which Google has FAILED to implement, thereby completely negating all of the openness and accessibility of the system they claim. If they are sincere about their desire to interoperate with people, then they need to step up and either do it or make some kind of guarantee they are, otherwise people like me are going to continue to complain whenever someone asks about Google talk or there is an open discussion about google talk.