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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.'"
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When do we get to the "rant" part? This is boring.
It was a nice trip down memory lane, so don't knock yourself about it. I have fond memories of ICQ with buddies on Captured.com, planetquake.com and late nite mapping sessions with the UH-OH echoing into my brain. And then there was that dreaded song -- you know what I'm talking about. ICQ invaded MTV. Ack -- **flips channel**.
What makes Jabber truly great is that it is a decentralized system.
You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central. They may have a bottom line to think about, yet we are not in business as free-thinking human beings to serve the needs of one company. What we tend to want always comes first, we are all very selfish -- centralized and independant. We do not want to give control to anyone. We want to save it for ourselves, because we have learned from our mistakes and we know what happens when you trust something far bigger than you.
We want to be free, open, decentralized.
But at Google, it's all about centralization. That's their way. The information they have access to at any given moment is insane, and I think it's the primary reason they believe so strongly in centralization, so that they can collect more information.
It's time to embrace a truly workable and distributed topology that will move us past these ridiculous incompatibilities.
I concur.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
That is, after all, the point of open source, is it not?
Surely it's too early to be slating what they're doing with this technology. Don't you think they might be taking an incremental approach?
Then again, I *do* sound like another Google apologist, don't I?
give it a few months. google has showed in the past that they rarely do something for no reason. i'm willing to at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they have something bigger planned down the road and that this is just an intro.
Remember this is still in a very early beta stage. On the developer page, they claim that they're moving toward interoperability with other networks and fully documenting the custom VOIP protocol they use.
They encourage people to comment in the Google
Talk Interoperability Google Group. It seems like they're trying to determine how to balance openness with security, privacy concerns (i.e., avoiding spam). I frankly don't know enough about Jabber, etc. to know if this is BS or not, but it sounds reasonable enough to me.
For one thing, when you allow just anyone to run a Jabber server, you're assuming they know HOW to run one and run it securely. Hell, even I run a Jabber server, but there ain't no way that thing is EVER going to be on the net in the open or do S2S with any other servers outside of my close circle of friends who *I KNOW PERSONALLY IN REAL LIFE*. My Jabber server is used by friends and family over OpenVPN. I really don't think anyone in their right mind believes in decentralized stuff unless they're doing something illegal or they're libertarians (who I am not so sure are in their right minds). I like a good top down solution with centralized control because it "just works" and you don't have to worry about weirdo incompatibilities since you define compatibility.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Nonsense. When it comes to editorials, there's little difference between an "official" shill/idiot like Dvorak, and a valid opinion from a blogger. In fact, the blogger may tend to make more sense because he's not serving other masters. (Note: This isn't ALWAYS true.) In other words, the editorial should be judged on its content, not necessarily who wrote it.
The problem is that blogging has a stigma attached to it. It's seen as a method through which people can voluntarily make their private lives public, making it the oddest form of online voyuerism available. However, the concept of publishing articles on a regular basis is not new, and there is no real division made between "blogging" and "writing regular articles". Thus it can be difficult to tell if a "blog" is actually something that can be safely ignored as a poor form of entertainment, or a reasonable attempt at serious writing.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It has been out for a week or so, and we should cut them some slack as they work out the kinks and add new features. GMail lacked a number of things I wanted it to have when it first came out, but Google seems to be slowly adding them with time. Google seems too happy to call things beta for just about forever, but at this stage I think we all should consider it as a real beta and just wait and see
What do you know I wrote a novel
If only S2S was the only Jabber feature that Google "left out" when rolling out GTalk... but they also forgot to activate all these standard jabber features
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
How do you know a blogger isn't "serving other masters"? I've set up thousands of blogs to casually place products oriented towards the youth market. It takes about 5 minutes to set up another blog and to begin to enhance Google search results with it. In between all the "lol" and "lmao" language, there's a lot of opportunity to sway the consumer who believes that blogs are always legit.
I'm getting freaking tired of people trashing google everytime they put out a beta!
Yes..it might not be the greatest thing since sliced bread but the POINT of releasing test software is for TESTING and feedback!
It's OK to trash the BETA, but don't mistake that by saying "Well....it sucks gonads. Google failed...I'll never use it again"
I'm pretty sure that if you actually read the google talk FAQ that they mention linking up with other networks in the future but they haven't implemented it yet. But why should we let facts get in the way of a good rant?
Something I've noticed with the whole Google talk thing is that even the people I know who are hardcore Linux geeks say "How is this better than AIM?"
I must say this is somewhat surprising... one of the tenets of the greatness of Linux is the openness and freedom to innovate - why does nobody care about the fact that IM has had almost no innovations lately?
Google promoting Jabber could be a great thing, assuming they will enable the server to server support. IM could become more of an open service where people actually CAN innovate, rather than a closed protocol run on some corporation's servers.
So, even if you are afraid of Google becoming powerful, or if you think that IM innovation is dead, I'm willing to carry at least some hope that getting Jabber into wider use could be a big deal in evolving how IM works. Just a thought...
I thought it was a Google product family
Gmail Beta
Gmaps Beta
Gtalk Beta
As I said, it isn't always true that a blogger isn't serving other masters. However, I have a hard time believing that Google is one of them. Google doesn't demand any sort of articles out of a blogger. It's completely up to the blogger what he wants to write about. The most that Google might do to a technologist is cause him to "optimize" his language for adwords.
OTOH, someone might look at the "Top 100 Keyword List" and decide to create a blog on that. If he has something interesting to say about viagra or bankruptcy, then he may very well make money on it. Otherwise this is hardly a workable business plan.
At the end of the day though, you have to judge the article on content. A blogger *may* be better because he's not serving other masters, or he may not. If you judge on the content itself, it really doesn't matter in the end, does it?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Imagine if google would open it's talk.google.com for server-to-server communication with other jabbers around.
..
Y! opens a jabber2yahoo bridge
MSN opens a jabber2msn bridge
AOL opens a jabber2aol bridge
..
Everybody would be happy, except for Y!, MSN and AOL.
Happend before, with Inbox size!
And they could keep their voice algorithms for their use, a hell with them! for a couple of years, until it becomes a standard feature, I can agree with that.
Then they should open this too:D
gtkaml.org
Exactly. It's all the same steaming pile of self-important crap.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I personally am not interested in the voice chat aspect of Google's client, nor am I interested in building an IM "platform." When I use IM, I just want to send messages back and forth to someone, and as long as the service itself is adequate, as most are, for me it comes down to the client itself. With all that said, these days I am still running AIM 4.3 on my Windows machine because it's the least annoying (doesn't ask you to put in a zip code, has no "AIM Today" Window). I'd been using gaim on Windows for a while, but it seemed to add ~30 seconds to my system boot time (I think it installs gtk or something to run) which I found annoying, so after my last format I didn't bother with it. So far I've found Google's IM client (which, I realize, is still "Beta") pretty lackluster. While it's got a clean interface, I find even an aging version of AIM like 4.3 to be more friendly, and it has what I absolutely require: timestamps in the chat. I absolutely will not use an IM client that doesn't show timestamps for all events. This is a relatively simple thing to add, so I imagine it will be added as an option in a future version, but for now it's a showstopper for me. All in all, I don't see what the hype was about, it's Just Another Jabber Client. Voice chat? Whoopee...
rooooar
"The problem is that blogging has a stigma attached to it."
No, I think the problem is that blogging deserves the stigma attached to it.
Without the ability to identify credible sources (yes, I know it is sometimes possible with blogs) a piece of information is essentially worthless.
Without the ability to identify credible sources (yes, I know it is sometimes possible with blogs) a piece of information is essentially worthless.
As you said, sometimes it is possible to cite credible sources. In the blog that I write (which I actually consider to be a collection of articles), I always include a "Links" area at the bottom of the article. This allows the reader to get up to speed and verify the technologies I have discussed. It also allows me to point to prior art when a new idea is being discussed.
However, such references are not always required. The purpose of an editorial is to provide an intelligent opinion. As a result, there are no references needed except to validate the subject of the topic. Quite often, it is unnecessary for the writer to provide links to the subject since it is considered a subject of which the readers should already be familiar. Thus editorials can be perfectly valid despite the lack of references.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Everyone come down out of their ivory towers and quit trumpeting how great they are for pointing out yet another reason why Google ain't the bees knees. Climb down out of your ivory towers and take a nice dose of reality.
Incremental improvements are a good thing - Starting w/ the absolute minimum feature set and building on it, all along making sure it works as advertised is a sound strategy. This approach allows you to continuously improve the software, and focus on addressing the issues that arise with the current feature set in a manageable way instead of having to address a mass of problems from all of the half-assed features you had to squeeze in because you had to have all of the bells, whistles, and even legit features. A frequent improvement/release cycle is a common practice for open source software products and Google is adopting a similar approach for its service.
You can't simulate this kind of load accurately - Sure you can run computer models of how the traffic load will behave and how the infrastructure will handle it, but you really don't know how it's going to work until you start putting some real user load on the system. By limiting the feature set, and in particular limiting inter-server communications you naturally limit the amount of load on the system. The users aren't going to switch completely from their current service to GTalk all in one day... so as traffic builds they can adjust the service settings, tweak the servers, do whatever to make sure they can continue to provide a quality service. And back to point #1... once you have a good understanding of the traffic patterns and capacity you can begin introducing new features that may change those patterns in a controlled way.
You can't predict how people will abuse the system - By limiting the feature set Google can better ensure that the system is not seriously abused by individuals who would want to use the system in a way that would annoy/harm the general user population or impact system performance. Connecting to other servers is a risky proposition that deserves careful attention and control to ensure that it works correctly. If Google make a misstep here and allows spammers to spam all of their users, and virii to spread across their system, and poorly managed Jabber servers to cause their messages to not reach their intended destinations you'll have a system that most people wouldn't want to trouble themselves with using. Google can start by controlling the environment while providing a base set of services... and then expand in a way that they can monitor and control to ensure that service is not impacted.
Get real feedback from real users - Instead of dreaming up a hundred things users probably want and squabbling over them internally, why not just release a base product that people will use and get direct feedback from them on what they want. This is what Google has setup... now they can ask their users do you want to jabber w/ other non-GTalk servers? Do you want more emoticons? What about real voice call capabilities? What about being able to search your conversations? What about... The point is let the users help direct the next round of development instead of spending a lot of time developing features for people who don't use the product.
Protect the service the customers want - The underlying principle behind all of this is that you have customers who want a service. The way to attract and keep those customers is by offering them a service they want and that works. Google has started by offering GTalk to a group of users. They'll hone the system, make sure it works, and if it meets their objectives and draws in customers they'll continue to expand on it's feature set in a way that keeps their customers from moving to some other service and continues to attract other customers... all the while being very careful not to make the service unstable or give something to their customers only to have to take it away (premature release of poorly test
Diffie Hellman is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. It is designed for safety from passive interceptor, but if an attacker has the ability to substitute packets then it can simply complete DH key exchange with both parties without either realising that they are not talking to the remote person.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is such a thing as thinking for yourself, you know. Not every piece of information has to be handed down from an authority.
Sometimes smart people say dumb things. We shouldn't accept it just because a smart person said it. And sometimes dumb people say smart things. We shouldn't ignore it just because a dumb person said it.
In the case of weblogs, both smart and dumb people write them. You don't know which is which until you read and evaluate what they are saying. They don't have to have credibility to impart useful information or come up with good ideas, and we don't have to disregard them because of a lack of credibility.
If you aren't able to identify credible sources in weblogs, then how do you do it for other media? Surely you don't automatically assume that somebody on television is credible? That everybody who can get a job writing a newspaper column is credible? No? Then surely you must think for yourself at some stage. Why can't you do that for weblogs as well?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I stopped reading at that point. This kind of attitude gave us the glorious Internet Explorer.
BTW: I frequently get "flashy, clicky-colorful, image-tinky-winky" mail^Mspam on my GMail account. I do not know what your problem is. I repeat that I think sticking to widely accepted standards and not being able to produce colored spam with GMail is a feature, not a bug.
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
One reason for Google to use Jabber technology but not to join their server network is simple: Google wants to spam people with their own advertising targeted by message content. That could be hardly acceptable by original jabber network community.
There you are, staring at me again.
Somehow, despite the use of various technologies, these messages seem to pass among all the mobile providers. Could the same business model or whatever standards, software, and services provide a solution or inspiration for this problem?
When Richard Stallman gave a talk at my Uni he wore bare feet and picked his toes while he talked, IIRC (please bear with me). He is so not on the radar of the 5.99999 billion people who don't religiously read Slashdot it's not funny. Google employs lots of really smart people who want to change the computer industry but also want to eat. For Google to support Jabber rather than come up with their own completely proprietry IM system like everybody else is F$#king awesome in my opinion. They've said they want to interoperate with others. That probably means they're trying clean up all the stupid restrictive practices of major IM clients, the same way they cleaned up the search engine business (can anyone truly remember search engines before Google with masses of ugly flashing banner ads for offshore casinos and useless results because most of the top search results were probably paid for, and still dislike Google?).
Why are there so many articles critical of Google, and so few critical of say AOL or Yahoo? Why is Google held up to such a different standard to other companies, who wouldn't think of basing an important product on something Open Source that has some potential but hasn't really had a huge impact yet? Maybe Jabber enthusiasts could think "Hmmm, perhaps we're lucky that Google has taken an interest in our obscure technology, and is paying smart people lots of money to take it to the people". Last I heard, Google wasn't doing anything to hinder hardcore Jabber people from doing what they were doing before Google Talk came along, if they don't want to be a part of the happy masses.