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Google Talk Claims Openness, Lacks S2S Support

Posted by Hemos on from the unhappiness-in-the-joy dept.

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.'"

2 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Central Me by Sanity · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.
    All he is suggesting is that they implement the same openness for IM that Google did for webmail. Right now, Google Talk is analogous to a version of GMail that only allowed users to send email to other GMail users. He is not asking Google to be any less centralised with Google Talk than they already are with GMail.

    Until I RTFA I didn't realise that inter-server communication was the really useful thing about Jabber. It looks like Google didn't either.

  2. Re:Central Me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > 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.

    Ah, but you can provide a for-profit service through a decentralised network.

    Imagine this: Google runs their IM network on the open XMPP/Jabber standard, and builds SIP based VoIP into their client (they say on their dev page that SIP is coming). Both are open standards and as such will be integrated into many clients and Jabber server implementations.

    Jabber supports gateways onto other IM networks, but that isn't the full extent of gateways. Google build a VoIP -> PSTN gateway (say voip.talk.google.com) that allows all these new clients with integrated SIP VoIP to dial out to the old PSTN network for a cost.

    What a lot of people don't realise about Jabber is that you aren't limited to using the gateways on your own Jabber server, so if Google then throws open S2S connections on their Jabber server user@jabber.org can access the Google VoIP->PSTN gateway and dial his parents (provided he has signed up with Google VoIP and has enough credit in his account) phone.

    Google has been buying up a lot of Dark Fibre lately and could seriously undercut their rivals. No more need for Skype or other such providers, and normal Jabber users can voice chat without going via Google due to the nice open VoIP standards implemented in all Jabber clients.