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.'"

Comments

Central Me

[mfh]

Select Quotes FTA...

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.

Re:Central Me

[Sanity]

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.

Re:Central Me

[Iriel]

It's really quite odd when I look at it. You would figure that with Google, being practically the last entry into the IM race, would be the most open and decentralized. Part of me wonders if they're scared of people misusing the service the way some sites abused Google Maps (not all, but some did, indeed violate the conditions), and that they're crippling the potentential to prevent another similar event.

Re:Central Me

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

"Every strategic move should build a positional advantage or remove a disadvantage."

Why is Google offering a Google talk system? It currently serves no ads, and being client agnostic, will likely be a long time before it does serve ads consistently. How does this service, which costs money, serve Google as a company? It is not bringing in any money. All it does is counter the chat offerings from web portal competitors like MSN and Yahoo (both of which offer chat services). Google has implied that they will facilitate interoperability with other chat services and even offer e-mail as a parallel example. So maybe talking to other jabber servers is disabled temporarily in the beta, or maybe they plan to keep it disabled as an anti-spam measure. I foresee this following the same route as e-mail though. In the long term maintaining a whitelist of servers will be too hard, so Google will move to a blacklist and spam filtering solution. By interoperating they gain access to users on other systems, and make their service more attractive, thus gaining more direct users. They'd be pretty dumb not top make it interoperate with everyone in the long-term.

Re:Central Me

[Red Flayer]

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.

Well of course -- without centralization you can't collate the information. Without collation, information is useless.

Re:Central Me

[log0n]

OT, but how/when did Google Maps get abused?

Re:Central Me

[GuyWithLag]

Au contraire, Google can (and will, I presume) collate all information going thru gmail.com, simply because if somebody has a @gmail.com jabber address he will need to connecto gmails servers, regardless of the connectivity to other servers.

Having an open Jabber server would simply make the Google one more attractive, hence increasing its mind/marketshare, bringing more users to it.

Re:Central Me

[French Mailman]

They are indeed very late in the IM market. This is why I think they will eventually open up to other Jabber servers, if only to shake things up in the IM world, and not just have yet another closed IM network. That would be too much of an uphill battle.

I also think the reason why they did not open it up right away, is that they did not want to be "just another Jabber public server". So they'll probably offer new services (such as VoIP) to get users to switch, before they open their network. They'll want to be a major Jabber server before they connect with the others.

Re:Central Me

[LnxAddct]

Yes google did realize this. If Jabber wants to bein S2S with GTalk, they should e-mail federation@google.com. You could start your own jabber server and go S2S with Google. They fully support it and they know its strengths, they haven't implemented it yet because a) They have their own issues with just releasing a new service, b) they are treading carefully and looking for solutions to "spim", i.e. They are Google, they can't just open up their IM service to every "Joe" in town, it'd be akin to an open proxy for spam. They are doing this right, let them be. The last thing we need are bayesian filters for IM.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Central Me

[mothlos]

You can't really make any money in a decentralized system

But that isn't the point. Google makes money where it can, but where it can't make money directly it can still earn something that is hard to just buy: Namespace. Even if Google doesn't make a dime on their IM, they are going to migrate people off of MSN, AIM, and Yahoo! messengers and replace those terms with Google.

Now the problem comes for Google if they alienate all those people who think that Google is leading a revolution to an open future with green pastures and the like. By not connecting to other Jabber servers they are going to turn off a lot of influential techies and it will hurt their name.

Google should just settle with getting people off of clients that burn competetors names into the brains of people and bask in the warm glow from the techie community for embracing an open standard because this closed network thing just isn't going to fly with a major Google market segment. I think that is going to hurt them more than if they chose to lose out on the opportunity to put the words "Google Talk" on everybody's desktop.

Re:Central Me

[Just Some Guy]

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

I never thought of it as the useful thing, but definitely high up on the list. I consider it almost exactly analogous to the SMTP server network. You get all the advantages of a private intraoffice server if you want, but also have the ability to send messages to other networks without having to create accounts on those networks: just route a message to the appropriate server and let it do the right thing.

Put another way, I don't see Google's (currently-)closed server as an improvement over AIM or MSN. I'd have to get all my friends to use it and set up Yet Another Buddy List (or another set of contacts to add to the Kopete metacontacts I've already defined). I can't just add myfriendsaccount@gmail.com to my current Jabber roster and be done with it.

Here's to hoping that they open it up. Until then, it's just another account taking up space in my IM client.

Re:Central Me

[desiderius7]

"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.

Re:Central Me

[Daniel Baumgarten]

Google Talk is another incentive to use GMail, which serves plenty of ads.

Re:Central Me

[GoRK]

In general IM via Jabber is a permissions based system. You can grant very fine grain permissions using the standards set forth in XMPP. It's pretty easy to discard messages from anyone not on your jabber roster, and this can be done taken care of server side to cut down on the traffic. With an IM application, you are in the unique position that making this the default behavior will not cause problems for people.

Their 'federation' concept is completely bogus too. I really don't expect them to let my small 22 person jabber server 'federate' with them, and why should I jump through hoops to support Google talk users?

What's worse about it is that although jabber supports transports, I really doubt that anyone is going to bother to write a jabber-to-jabber transport to support Google Talk -- because anyone who would be capable of authoring such a transport is likely to be incredibly peeved about the lack of proper s2s support.

Re:Central Me

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Re:Central Me

[Uber Banker]

Why is Google offering a Google talk system? It currently serves no ads, and being client agnostic, will likely be a long time before it does serve ads consistently.

It does not need to serve ads to be useful. Google excel at word and verbal pattern recognition. When I use Gmail I get an email relevent to the email I'm reading in isolation, but not very relevent to me in the broad interaction of interests I have. The more Google know about me the more they can tailor an ad to me as a person, not me as an isolated communication thread: knowing what I casually chat about is a great leap forward - this could also be true in monitoring your interaction with stories via Google's RSS based personalised homepages. It's like Yahoo tried to be but actualy done so the user enjoys it instead of being expected to endure it.

For example, I may have a daily news bulletin email about hedge funds, at the moment I get some really quite poor hedge fund/IFA adverts in these. I also have IMs about asymetric returns of financial markets with friends that research these things. If I got an ad about a hedge fund company that offered a service in relation to asymetric returns (because Google could tie up my interests - the all important interaction effect), or a data provider offering reaearch quality data, I'd be very keen to click on the ad (and possibly follow up the service). Thus Google make several fold the revenue they would do had they not monitored my IM.

Re:Central Me

[NocturnDragon]

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!

Re:Central Me

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"They will be open, but in a slow way and only if your server can be trusted! "

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Re:Central Me

[Jeffrey Baker]

I have nothing to add, except this: ICQ, quake, threewave, captured.com, blues news, sugarshack, redwood, the first big lan parties, the first cd burners, the start of mp3 trading. golden age, man. *sniff*

Re:Central Me

[aztracker1]

I'm not certain about non-gmail accounts on the talk servers google has, but with msn, you can have an msn-messenger account to any email address, not just msn or hotmail... imho that is kind of a nice thing about it.

Re:Central Me

[dfn_deux]

Marketshare does not equal income... This was the single most important thing that people forgot in the 90's and helped trigger the boom/bust of the first dotcom bubble. Google has thus far become a major player and managed to turn a profit doing it. If the only thing their IM service does is steal market share from other non-profitable services from other comanies then google gains nothing that generates value and further more they paint an even larger target on themselves as a growing concern for those people worried about privacy in an overly centralized infrastructure. I certainly hope that this IM endevour of theirs has some really smart business people behind it with a serious end game strategy to make it a profitable venture without being something we need to fear...

Re:Central Me

[dnoyeb]

Yes. In fact, i wouldnt be disappointed if the closed the IM protocol so long as they open the server s2s connections.

But they must treat their server connection just like they did with gmail. They cant let just anybody in. probably Google will force servers that connect to google to abide by some agreement so they can eliminate spam. Might as well start from jump.

Not supporting s2s does not get google anything. The client side is where people try to put the ads anyway.

Re:Central Me

[spectral]

But most other jabber servers can connect to each other automatically. His 22 user jabber server can talk to and get talked to by every other jabebr server I've used (except google talk). No configuration is necessary. I can start my own, tomorrow, and it JustWorks.

That's why he shouldn't have to.

Re:Central Me

[NickFortune]

You can't really make any money in a decentralized system

I know it's peripheral to your central point, but I think I'd like to challenge that assumption.

The Web is the archetypal decentralised system. It makes tons of money for all sorts of people.

But at Google, it's all about centralization. That's their way.

Is it? I have problems taking that on board.

If you want a company that was all about centralisation, look at CompuServe, who maintained their own private internet and charged a steep fee for access. You got stricty the services they offered and they allegedly censored discussions as a matter of routine. By the standards of the time they were a prestigious service making reasonable money. By modern standards, almost no one used it.

AOL were also centralisation freaks, determined to make all the best stuff on the web AOL subscribers only. That didn't work either, and AOL lost customers almost as fast as it gained them.

Google, by contrast make megabucks by aggregating and indexing. There's nothing in Google that prevents you from accessing Yahoo or AltaVista if you wish, and they index everything they are allowed to index.

This isn't to say I support their partitioning of the Jabber network. I think that is a spectacularly boneheaded move hioch makes their client enormously less attractive. It's also a move that seems out of character, and I hope they'll relent. Certainly it'll be worth watching to see what they do.

Re:Central Me

[cduffy]

But they must treat their server connection just like they did with gmail. They cant let just anybody in.

Eh? S2S on GMail is entirely open -- I can put up my own SMTP server and send mail from it to GMail users and visa-versa. I can't put up my own Jabber server and do the same with Google Talk.

Re:Central Me

[Cocteaustin]

That may be. But it seems like a fairly expensive way to drive users to Gmail, particularly when you assume that 1) you don't actually need to use Gmail to use Talk, you just need to sign up for it, and 2) lots (maybe most?) people who use G-Talk will already have a GMail account already.

Re:Central Me

[sznupi]

I think somebody will care if Google would say that they won't open to other Jabber servers. I'll describe situation in Poland: apart from "leading" IM network, Gadugadu (which fvcks users as they can - there are ads (often flash based, sometimes with sounds) in mnain program windows, in conversations windows (3 in each one of them), in "search conntact" dialog and also as popups and poltergeists), there's also second IM company, Tlen, which is based on Jabber, but not open and right now a little modified for original Jabber. But there is a transport nonetheless. And in case of Google, full specs are there, no reverse engineering needed.

You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[pmazer]

the article starts with "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget..."

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[kc0re]

You, are of course implying by that statement, that this *points* is the beginning of Slashdot's decline. This is not the beginning, it's virtually more grease on the rails of the sled of decline.

News for Nerds, Reporting on Blogs.

What are we? CNN?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[AKAImBatman]

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?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Seanasy]

When it comes to editorials, there's little difference between an "official" shill/idiot like Dvorak, and a valid opinion from a blogger.

Exactly. It's all the same steaming pile of self-important crap.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[AKAImBatman]

Was that intended as a personal attack?

Seriously, I'd like to see more intelligent discourse on the 'net. Far too much of it has been "look at me!", even in the early days. (Anyone remember personal home pages?) Blogging software merely provides an outlet through which public communication can occur. It can be used intelligently, or it can be used frivolously. It's up to the "blogger". In that respect, nothing has changed.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Eil]

You know Slashdots going downhill when the article starts with "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget..."

Agreed. But moreso for the "Nugget" part than the LiveJournal part. Zing!

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[ifwm]

"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.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without the ability to identify credible sources (yes, I know it is sometimes possible with blogs) a piece of information is essentially worthless.

So, you'll understand why I'm not taking your comment on board at all?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[ifwm]

I think in this case I would draw a distinction between an editorial and an information piece ( which I thought was implied, but apparently not).

"The purpose of an editorial is to provide an intelligent opinion."

And this is where you trip. Without the ability to verify the credibility of a source (including editorials, and the people who write them) the information is still worthless.

The fact that it's an editorial is only relevant when it is explicitly demonstrated to be an editorial, and therefore an opinion. In such cases I would agree with you, but who would pay attention to an opinion piece by someone who isn't qualified to give an opinion?

Just having an opinion on something doesn't make it a valid, or useful, opinion.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[AKAImBatman]

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. :-)

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Elwood P Dowd]

Whatever. If it's good enough for jwz...

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Nugget]

Suit yourself.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[That's Unpossible!]

Without the ability to identify credible sources a piece of information is essentially worthless.

Yes, ifwm, I totally agree!

What kind of prick rags on someone for being anonymous while also being anonymous?

Yours truly,

That's Unpossible! (my real name)

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Bogtha]

Without the ability to identify credible sources (yes, I know it is sometimes possible with blogs) a piece of information is essentially worthless.

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?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[westyx]

people should make up their minds based on the information presented - and by communicating together on the strengths and weaknesses of said information.

say, if, i dunno, there was a way to 'reply' to a post - i know, it'd be like an online journal, with the ability to "respond" - you could even have metablogsites, where people post links to things they find interesting, and then people could hit "reply to this" to voice their own opinion.

y'know, just voicing my thoughts out loud. never happen tho.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Seanasy]

Was that intended as a personal attack?

Actually, it was intended to be humorous in the "it's funny because it's true," vein. Not all blogs are self-important crap but all Dvorak articles are self-important crap. I'm not the one that made the initial comparison :P

Blogs, however, lend themselves easily to the Dvorak self-righteous, know-it-all style of discourse. Well, it's not discourse so much as soliloquy.

Now, don't be so defensive and understand that what people really are reacting to is Slashdot linking to a blogger's ranting as if it mattered.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[ifwm]

"There is such a thing as thinking for yourself, you know. Not every piece of information has to be handed down from an authority."

And when exactly did I say I needed "information... handed down from an authority"?

"If you aren't able to identify credible sources in weblogs, then how do you do it for other media? "

What does this mean exactly? I look it up when it is provided, and generally dismiss the article if there is no documentation.

"That everybody who can get a job writing a newspaper column is credible"

I never claimed that, YOU did. Stop putting up straw men.

"Why can't you do that for weblogs as well?"

Because I don't have time to wade through endless crap to discern what is credible and what isn't.

How about you address my point now, which is that without the ability to verify the veracity of a piece of information, it cannot be considered credible?

Is your point that non-verifiable information from an unknown source IS credible?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[ifwm]

I agree with everything you say.

I think the implication others have made that I somehow support print sources over blogs is ludicrous. I apply the same standard to print journalists as I do to blogs.

"Reputation can be built a variety of ways. Not the least of which is by consistently sharing a valid and intelligent opinion. :-)"

Agreed.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Nugget]

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.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[AKAImBatman]

Actually, I was trying to be funny myself. I should have put a smiley after that, sorry. :-)

Blogs, however, lend themselves easily to the Dvorak self-righteous, know-it-all style of discourse. Well, it's not discourse so much as soliloquy.

The one difference in blogs (which I'd like to see more of) is that bloggers can argue a point back and forth. While one can do this on a forum, you can only do it for as long as the thread stays active. Blogging allows you a much more open forum, as well as more time to develop a well rounded argument. :-)

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[fm6]

Let me answer your question by asking two of my own. (1) Briefly, what were you trying to say? What point were you trying to make. Boil it down to a sentence or two. (2) Precisely where in your piece did you state this idea?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Nugget]

1) Despite Google's claims to the contrary, their Google Talk service is not open and does improve the already sorry state of internet instant messaging. If this bothers you, please let Google know.

2) In various places within the article and summarized thusly in the concluding paragraph.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[fm6]

Which makes your argument really hard to find. Is it so suprising I thought you didn't have one?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[Nugget]

I guess your point is now that you'd prefer that I had written something that was easier to skim. You're free to dislike the style I chose, of course. I'm happy that I'm not always slave to writing in a strict AP style urgency weighted order that protects my point from readers who can't be bothered to follow a "continued on page 11" jump.

I wrote what I wrote in the style that felt right and it seems to have resonated with more than a few readers. I found that it flowed better laying out the foundation for my thoughts before trying to justify them. Perhaps you didn't notice that the entire blog was on the same subject. The statement culled in the slashdot summary wasn't buried, it was surrounded by context.

Am am unsurprised that people exist, such as yourself, who couldn't be bothered to read the post. It was long and didn't have many pictures. I did think you overstepped your case a bit with the invective, however.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[fm6]

I guess your point is now that you'd prefer that I had written something that was easier to skim.

No, I'd prefer that you were easier to read. Good prose is more skimmable, but that's a side effect. The purpose of good prose is accesibility. That means structure. Not unlike well written software.

The statement culled in the slashdot summary wasn't buried, it was surrounded by context.

That's like saying Blackbeard's Treasure Chest isn't buried, it's just surrounded by dirt. If you want somebody to find something, you don't make it hard for them to find it.

Am am unsurprised that people exist, such as yourself, who couldn't be bothered to read the post. It was long and didn't have many pictures. I did think you overstepped your case a bit with the invective, however.

Now you're just being childish. I'm simply repeating what any writing instructor would tell you.

Speaking of books with pictures, I just finished reading Simon Schama's Citizens. There were a lot of pictures, but not enough to make up for the fact that the book was over 900 pages long! But it was fun to read, because Schama know how to make a complicated argument accessible and entertaining.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[rossifer]

Don't worry yourself on this one. Your article was was well organized, interesting, and incisive. I particularly appreciated the slightly humorous questions from the listener's POV which divided the lengthy content into comfortably sized, encapsulated pieces.

Keep writing how you write. It's clear you're doing just fine. I could offer criticism, but it would only be at the grammar-nazi level, not at the clarity of writing level (and I hate grammar-nazi's, so I won't do that to you).

Regards,
Ross

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[quinkin]

Isaac, I think I can summarise your criticisms thusly:

Whinge, whinge, whinge, bitch, bitch, bitch, moan... *I wish I had a tiny amount of talent too...*

Speaking of talent, or at least lack thereof, your resume is unbelievably uninspiring. Good luck with applying your inimitably superior prose to assisting others in the use of a word processor.

Here is a thought, instead of contributing to the already copious amounts of "you aren't as good as me" posts, you could actually attempt to write or create something original. Of course you would then have to endure a stream of rude, self important, excruciatingly boring drivel from others such as yourself.

Ooh Schama... the height of worldiness... Seriously though I had a look and couldn't find the summary anywhere in the first or last page. Amazon managed it though:
'Schama argues that the Revolution did not produce a "patriotic culture of citizenship" but was preceded by one.'
So I guess Amazon's writing is also superior to Schama's?

'The purpose of good prose is accesibility(sic).' - Ah and here we come to the crux of the issue, you are a technical writer and love the dry, ordered, lifeless prose that is optimal for such application.

Some of us define good prose through more than just an accessibilty metric. The conversational tone in the article was ideal as an example of audience awareness, the vivid personification of much of the more technical details decreases the informational dichotomy between quasi- and Uber- geeks, finally the word choice was understandable but expressive beyond the usual geek grunts ("tenable", "demarcation", "shims" and "ubiquitous" were a few than sprang out - hardly obscure but refreshing to see when "livable", "division", "tape" and "standard" would have been sufficient ).

Please feel free to reply, but I can't say I am going to waste any further time on you.

Q.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[fm6]

Please feel free to reply, but I can't say I am going to waste any further time on you.

Why not? You obviously enjoy making childish insults.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[quinkin]

Against my better judgment:

Why not? Because you are the type of small minded fool who will try to force tangential threads by refusing to acknowledge the core of an argument. Especially when the main thread makes you look like a consumate prat.
Case in point, you reply to the last sentence of my message.

For the record, some of them were quite mature insults. A childish insult would be "You smell of poo!".

Q.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[fm6]

So you do have time for me? But to talk, not to listen...

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

[fm6]

Nugget, this switching logins fools nobody.

Incidentally, a key part of good writing is expressing yourself clearly and precisely. For example, "Tell me what's wrong with my writing," does not mean the same thing as "Don't criticize my writing or I'll pull a world-class tantrum."

When?

[FluffyWithTeeth]

"Despite all their self-congratulation about open communications" I don't remember hearing about this, last I heard they simply mentioned that they were using an open protocol to support run their service. Google is a company, people, it runs off money, not fanaticism. They don't have to do all the other things that the open source geeks do, that's not important, they use the piece of the code that's useful for them.

That is, after all, the point of open source, is it not?

Re:When?

[Barsema]

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

Re:When?

[prell]

One freedom of open-source is the transparency to see how ideas are implemented, but it seems to me that the spirit of open-source lies in acknowledging, sharing, and improving what's already out there, for the benefit of us all. If that's true, then cooperative networking seems to be within the spirit of the open-source attitude.

Manifestos, like laws, can't be all-encompassing. Our morals and values have to fill the gaps and make the manifestos real. Individually, we must decide what we value: people, or money.

Re:When?

[Ingolfke]

Google is a company, people, it runs off money, not fanaticism.

Just think if someone did actually invent an engine that ran off of fanaticism... my goodness... you could power everything on the planet by simply hooking it up to /.

Re:When?

[bigpat]

Google is a company, people, it runs off money, not fanaticism. They don't have to do all the other things that the open source geeks do, that's not important, they use the piece of the code that's useful for them.

Yes, but I'm entitled not to use it like I have not used AOL's, MSN's or other proprietary IMs. If google chooses to follow the same model of message incompatibility and closed directories that AOL has then they should not shun the comparison.

That is, after all, the point of open source, is it not?

Not when talking about network and messaging protocols, the point is interoperability and ability to communicate with others, not setting up an island of users that can only communicate with themselves. Remember when AOL users could only email eachother? AOL resisted for years making their email able to communicate with people on other networks, the same has held true for IM except they didn't have serious competition from a simple open architecture alternative. It is the same dumb (for users) model done over and over.

Thanks, but no thanks, if google is not supporting an interoperable IM framework then i'll just continue to use gmail as my IM substitute until something better comes along. If interoperability and distributedness is on google talk's immediate roadmap then they need to say so and i'll hang around to see how it goes.

Re:When?

[bigpat]

BOYCOTT GOOGLE! USE GOOGLE INSTEAD!

not really a boycott when a product does not have all the features you want. a boycott is when you would otherwise buy or use a product, but refuse to do so for polical reasons largely removed from the features of the product itself. Google talk lacks interoperability (not with AOL and MSN which I realize will disallow interoperability, but with other jabber IM servers) until it does or they say that they will, I think it is just another dead end communications platform.

I realize that by saying that gmail works fine with their IM like conversations and that I don't need to use google talk, then it seemingly leaves little incentive for google to improve their product. But google is much more ambitious than that. Heck if they don't like the jabber protocols or implementations, then they are in a position that they could just release a new reference implementation and set of protocols. At least then we would have hope of email like interoperability for IM.

Early days

[uberchicken]

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?

Re:Early days

[Zeinfeld]

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?

Well thats what I would do, test out the scheme in isolation, then allow for peering.

The big problem in the IM world is how to establish an open system without getting spammed. I don't think that Google will have missed the fact that their product is way behind the established networks. It is in Google's interest to be open here.

Re:Early days

[LnxAddct]

This is exactly what they *are* doing. Read this. If you run a jabber server and want to S2S with them, email federation@google.com. If people just read before posting blogs on livejournal and then slashdot, they wouldn't look so fullish. As I said in another post, Google is taking this slowly because by just opening their Jabber server to other Jabber servers would put them in a world of hurt with "Spim", itd akin to an open proxy for spam. People need to read, and let Google take their time. They didn't lock us into using just their client, because jabber supports many clients, what makes you think they'll lock us into using just their network when jabber supports many more. People jump to radical conclusions. Google Talk was slightly disappointing in that it didn't even have file tranfers, but as far as openness goes, Google is doing everything right. Now after Google gets this service settled in after a few weeks, and they start S2Sing with others, people are going to say things like "Google never would have done that if we didn't make a huge fuss and get it on /. , Google has become evil, Wah Wah Wah, we need to force them to do anything good now so whenever they do something we think is bad, make sure to blog about it." This article is just about as ridiculous as the one the other day about a parrallel Googlenet.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Early days

[Nugget]

I don't think it's too early to start holding Google's feet to the fire over this issue, though. Their words and actions (thus far) on this issue do not seem encouraging to me. It looks more like they're taking an incremental approach towards their goal of a closed, federated network.

Anyone who would prefer to see Google Talk become an open network which actually makes use of the decentralized nature of XMPP should be concerned. Now is the appropriate time to voice those concerns.

Re:Early days

[maw]

Not drawing conclusions based on very limited information doesn't make you a foaming-at-the-mouth fanboy or antifanboy.

Re:Early days

[Zeinfeld]

Not such a big problem at all. Currently Google Talk only allows you to receive IMs from people already on your contact list. If all Jabber clients standardise on this then that will cut down on a considerable amount of spam.

Well I would still want to get the basic system working first before testing that theory. It is easier to add features than remove them.

Re:Early days

[cduffy]

If you run a jabber server and want to S2S with them, email federation@google.com

I did. No (non-form) response.

Compared to having server-to-server support, though, it's just silly. Would you put up with needing to sign a contract with AOL before folks on your mail server could send messages to theirs?

Re:Early days

[axxter]

Ok I did mail federation@google on day 1. I work in the acedemic computing department at a University, we are exploring Jabber/XMPP as a way of supporting teaching and research colaboration - so federating with google would be useful for us. I got an automated message witth a reference numkber of over 35 million and am still awaiting a responce....

"Open"

[dsginter]

A truly open system would not require YET ANOTHER FREAKIN' EMAIL ADDRESS. I have like seven email addresses, although I use only one. The rest are needed for IM services.

Google Talk will not be successful until Google management realize this.

Re:"Open"

[aussie_a]

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).

Re:"Open"

[Xarius]

It's not just an "account name", it's the way Jabber works.

You could have a whinypants@boobs.com account, but you'd have to be running a Jabber server at boobs.com.

It works in a very similar way to email, it sends all messages to the domain part of the address, and the server at that domain deals with the message in whatever way it needs to.

Re:"Open"

[sergio.garcia]

This is really silly. You *do* need some sort of password protected "user account" somewhere, to protect your identity. What if that user account includes already an email service? What is wrong with that? No one is forcing you to use it!!

Re:"Open"

[L. VeGas]

I completely agree with this. It's one of my gripes mentioned in this review
Google Talk - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
I alse address the Jabber issue (not so eloquently as TFA).

Re:"Open"

[sud_crow]

Thats not true. Back in that time you had a dropdown box next to your username with two options: @hotmail.com and @msn.com. I dont remember for sure since when they allow non-hotmail/msn addresses but the thing is, they started allowing other mail accounts when they replaced the dropdown box for an automatic completition to @hotmail.com if you pressed TAB after writing your username (otherwise, you had to write your whole address, just like now, even with @hotmail.com ones). I would say this wasnt available at least until 2003 and maybe 04.

Re:"Open"

[jd0g85]

A truly open system would not require YET ANOTHER FREAKIN' EMAIL ADDRESS

From the about page http://www.google.com/talk/about.html#open:

We want to work with other willing service providers to enable their users to communicate directly with Google Talk users.

From what I understand, they want all ISPs to host their own IM servers that are interoperable, just like email servers. This doesn't sound unreasonable.

For the time being, Google is the only one hosting such servers (although you can't really claim to be interoperable if there is no one to cooperate with). It makes sense that if you're using a Google server you must first login with Google credentials. Requiring a Gmail account fits perfectly with there model.

If you really want to use your primary email to chat, then tell your ISP to join up. Until then, you have to sign up with Google, which accounts for the extra email address.

Re:"Open"

[rainman_bc]

Thats not true

I have an @shaw.ca account on MSN. I've had it since 2001.

Re:"Open"

[krem81]

I've had an @yahoo account with MSN since 2001.

Re:"Open"

[Spy der Mann]

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).

I know someone who signed up for MSN messenger using his Yahoo! mail address. He can't transfer files at all using his yahoo address. However, when he uses his hotmail account, he has no problems.

"Embrace and extend", anyone?

Re:"Open"

[giverson]

I've been using MSN Messenger with a non-hotmail/msn email address since the last few months of 2002.

Re:"Open"

[letxa2000]

Strange. My MSN Messenger ID is @yahoo.com and it works fine for everything, including transferring files.

Re:"Open"

[Maestro4k]

I know someone who signed up for MSN messenger using his Yahoo! mail address. He can't transfer files at all using his yahoo address. However, when he uses his hotmail account, he has no problems. What types of files? I use a non-MSN/Hotmail address and transferring files works fine except for types MSN has decided are evil, such as jpgs. Since I use Trillian people can send me jpgs still but if you're talking to someone who has the MSN client it will refuse to allow them to accept the transfer. On my end it just sits there like it's waiting for them to accept. Actually this didn't occur until the most recent version of MSN Messenger either.

What blows my mind is MSN seems to think .exe files are a-ok, but .jpg files are evil incarnate. Gotta love their security mindset.

Re:"Open"

[elemental23]

For the time being, Google is the only one hosting such servers

Not even close. My web hosting company, for example, provides Jabber with all service levels. Why have a Jabber ID of user@gmail.com when you can have user@your-own-domain? Needless to say, they also support S2S.

I was hoping that Google Talk would be the thing to get some people to start moving away from AIM to Jabber. As it stands though, Google Talk is no better than AIM or any other propietary IM network.

If you really want to use your primary email to chat, then tell your ISP to join up.

Also note that an e-mail address is not an inherent requirement to use Jabber. It may be required by the operator of the Jabber server you want to use, but there's no reason one couldn't get Jabber service from a provider they otherwise have nothing to do with. See the open server list at Jabber.org.

Re:"Open"

[MadAhab]

As it stands... but this is a public beta. Google has so far shown - via gmail - that they will open things up, given time to do technical assurance. They could have a major SPIM problem if they aren't careful.

So I'm willing to be patient, not least because this could be the not-so-very-thin wedge in opening IM against proprietary systems. It could mean the usefullness - finally - of having myname@mydomain.dom for IM. So user@your-own-domain might finally become useful.

And if it doesn't turn out that way - if they lock up the protocol against open participation, in the end, I'll be among the first in line to call "betrayal".

But so far - third party clients work. GAIM works. Even though it isn't on their "clients" page, Kopete does work - with no nothing extra.

I'm willing to grant them time to figure out the anti-spim issues before going totally open on s2s. For now, the no-jabber-spim phenom is probably that no one thinks it worthwhile to bother. But if Google enters the game, signed certs for SSL-based s2s could - and probably should - become the norm. The next test would be: can the SSL cert-granting mechanisms live up to real attack pressure by spammers - not that this will be tested severely while zombie-sent email spam is profitable.

Re:"Open"

[The Cydonian]

I signed up for my MSN Messenger account using my corporate email ID. I have had no problems transferring files to people on my list.

Re:"Open"

[xerxesdaphat]

I call bullshit. I'm using a gmail address on MSN, no problems, and my cousin uses his school email address (sth like onehunga.edu.nz). Never a problem.

Google+Jabber=?

[diamondmagic]

I thought google was out to "organise the worlds information" Froogle? Yes! Maps? Yes! Gmail? Mabye. But Jabber?!?

Re:Google+Jabber=?

[diegocgteleline.es]

All your information is belong to use - including your thougts

-- Google

Re:Google+Jabber=?

[gmuslera]

What about searching between your past chats? Or a combined search between mails and chats because "someone told me something like blakblahblah" and you dont remember where and who?

Re:Google+Jabber=?

[diamondmagic]

Google Desktop can do that.

Really disappointing

[bigtallmofo]

caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support

I tried to explain to my 15-year-old niece how she shouldn't use Google Talk because of its lack of support for XMPP server-to-server communication. Then she discovered some new emoticons and stopped paying attention to me.

Re:Really disappointing

[masklinn]

I know that i'll be modded down for an unfunny comment to your witty remark... but GTalk doesn't even provide emoticons...

Re:Really disappointing

[scovetta]

A superior uncle would have convinced her of the advantages of XMPP server-to-server support. Talk would have spread like wildfire through the cafeterias of American high-schools and Google would have already had to bow to the pressure. ;)

Re:Really disappointing

[Baloo Ursidae]

I tried to explain to my 15-year-old niece how she shouldn't use Google Talk because of its lack of support for XMPP server-to-server communication.

Don't do this, please. Google is so very close to getting it right, and they have at least made *some* steps in the right direction. They at least picked XMPP, right? Eventually they will figure it out and do s2s. The publicity will catch up with them.

Re:Really disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know anything about internet chat? Your 15 year old niece is actually a 40 year old FBI agent.

Re:Really disappointing

[Stephen Williams]

What, you mean that if you type ":-)", ":-P", ";-)" etc, they don't get transmitted?

Emoticons don't have to be graphical.

-Stephen

Re:Really disappointing

[vikramrn]

Common emoticons are highlighted in blue, including but possibly not limited to:
:-)
:-(
:-P
:-O
:-D
;-)
:'-(
:-x
:-|

(and the variations without the 'nose')

Re:Really disappointing

[sik0fewl]

You, sir, are wrong.

Re:Really disappointing

[The Cydonian]

Not quite emoticons, but for anyone interested, words surrounded by asterisks (eg, *this*) turn bold and those with underscores turn into italics (eg _word_).

give it a few months

[nes11]

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.

Re:give it a few months

[j0217995]

Why should we give it a few months. Imagine if someone tried to write the above about a Microsoft product. Imagine what it would be modded to and also the amount of replies to it.

Ah but I forgot this was Google we are talking about so a different standard applies.

Remember the articles about start.com and the flames about how X didn't work or Y didn't look good in Z browser. Or how the site failed the ACID or whatever else people whined about. The site was still in beta but yet people expected 3 people from MS to have a fully working product in the Beta stage.

Re:give it a few months

[nes11]

and that's why the slashdot community is considered a joke by most professionals.

just because everyone would bash another company the same way doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. you're logic is akin to saying "billy did it, so it's ok if i do it"

I would've made the same reply about smart.com; give them a few months & let's see what they produce. however I will say that purely based on track records I'm more willing to give google a break than microsoft. not that google's above reproach, but they have earned at least some leeway.

Perhaps More to Come

[stevemm81]

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.

Re:Perhaps More to Come

[youknowmewell]

Stop it, you're not allowed to bring up important information like that so soon after someone's blog rantings are posted on the /. front page!

Re:Perhaps More to Come

[CvD]

I sent them a comment and got a "helpful" reply back.

My comment:

I can't seem to add jabber users that have accounts on other servers. The
request doesn't arrive at their client. And neither can they add my google
jabber account... is this by design? (I thought all jabber users could
chat with jabber users on other servers).

And got the reply:

Hello,

Thank you for your message.

If you'd like to add new friends, follow these steps:

For contacts in your Friends list:

1. Scroll over your friend's name, and click 'invite.'
2. Verify your friend's email address in the dialogue box that appears,
and click 'Next.'
3. Choose to send a standard invitation to your friend, or customize the
message by entering text in the text field.

*If your friend does not have a Gmail email address, an invitation to
create an account will be sent with the invitation to Google Talk.
Invitations you send through Google Talk are deducted from your available
Gmail invitations.
4. Click 'Next.'
5. Click 'Finish' in the dialogue box that appears confirming that your
friend was invited.

For contacts not in your Friends list:

1. Click 'Add friend' at the bottom of your Friends list.
2. In the 'Add:' field, enter the email address of the friend you'd like
to add.
- If you'd like to add more than one friend at a time, just make sure to
separate their email addresses with commas.
- If the friends you'd like to invite are listed in your Gmail Contacts
list, click 'Choose from my contacts...' after clicking 'Add friend.'
3. Click 'Next >>' after you've entered all the friends you'd like to
invite.
4. A dialogue box will appear to confirm that your friends were invited to
Google Talk. Click 'Finish.'

Remember, to talk with your friends, they need to have Gmail addresses. If
you invite a friend who doesn't have a Gmail address to download Google
Talk, he or she will be able to create a Gmail account.

Each time you add new contacts in Google Talk, they're also added to your
Gmail Contacts list, and vice-versa. Keep in mind that removing or
blocking someone from your Google Talk Friends list does not affect your
Gmail Contacts list.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

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.

Re:Perhaps More to Come

[coolGuyZak]

Uh oh... is it considered even worse form to do so in response to the actual article?

I'm surprised that /. hasn't decended en-masse to comment the hell out of his post. ;)

Re:Perhaps More to Come

[Knetzar]

The only place on talk.google.com that I found anything refering to Jabber is on the client choice page.
*The company that makes Trillian offers a free version of its client, but in order to connect to Google Talk or any other service that supports the Jabber/XMPP protocol, you'll need to purchase Trillian Pro.

So I suppose the question is, is interoperability with other Jabber servers part of the Jabber/XMPP protocol?

Re:Perhaps More to Come

[bill_mcgonigle]

I sent them a comment and got a "helpful" reply back. ...
WTF? Thats not what I asked, was it?


Wait, you actually expected support e-mail to be responded to in a thoughful, helpful manner? You should have been modded funny.

For instance, I still can't get a mail through to anyone at Yahoo! Groups that their e-mail verified can't handle + characters in e-mail addresses anymore (I have some previously verified OK). Every time I've tried I've just been mired in 4 levels of response mail from people who can't parse the question. Then I fill out the followup survey as 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 in helpfulness, and get no response. The story is the same just about everywhere.

Re:Perhaps More to Come

[kiddygrinder]

2 points:
1. It's a new service, i'd say over 70% of people are asking these questions.
2. I'd say google's support department consists of less than 20 people. You do the math.

That said, with all their crazy targeted advertising junk you'd at least think they could provide targeted answers.

Give it time

[Chaotic Spyder]

I'm sure they have something big planned. I doubt they would be using Jabber without planning on using S2S in the future.. The potential for this is HUGE.. Use Google talk and watch Google adds when talking to anybody on any protocol. Why wouldn't they? Remember folks, this is beta software that is only a week old.

I must be honest I am incredibly disappointed with Google talk (as of right now). I'm currently in the process of setting up my own jabber server and I am fairly new to jabber but I really do think that Google talk has a lot more potential..

Re:Give it time

[Nugget]

That is your prerogative, of course. Myself, I am not sure they have something big planned and I do have doubts about their commitment to S2S in the future. Moreover, after combing their website and discussion forums, my doubts are even stronger than before. I'm not comfortable just assuming that it will all work out fine despite the evidence.

I do agree, though, that the potential in Google Talk is HUGE. And it's for the sake of that potential that I hope people start asking questions about S2S now, when we have a chance of influencing the decisions Google will make regarding their service.

If we wait until later we've missed our window of opportunity to let Google know that truly open S2S is important and that a federated approach causes more problems than it solves.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[pmazer]

But does it run on Linux?

Yes, use Gaim

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[CHR1S]

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

How is S2S a Strength?

[eno2001]

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.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[mjg59]

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. Like, say, SMTP, NNTP or any of the other decentralised protocols that the Internet is built upon? I'm not going to argue that a decentralised solution is inherently better (I can think of a few reasons why I'd benefit, but this probably isn't the case for most users), but the Internet has shown that services don't need to be centralised in order to work.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[LWATCDR]

"I really don't think anyone in their right mind believes in decentralized stuff unless they're doing something illegal or they're libertarians "
You mean like DNS, http, and email.
The original idea behind jabber was to be the email of IM. Each ISP would run a jabber server like they do an email server. You would have one address for email and IM. Not a bad plan but very few ISP did it.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[Eminence]

I don't understand your rant. People set up servers, users get to use those they choose and like. Isn't that the way it should be?

I use a Jabber server run by a friend of mine on his server. Somehow he is connected with other Jabber throughout the world and it's quite convenient. But I don't think at all how this relates to state of the mind or doing anything illegal. It's just some kind of nonsense what you say here.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[FauxPasIII]

> 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.

Sure, if "you" are Google, Inc. Or Microsoft, Apple, AOL, any of the big proponents of centralization. What happens
when you've built a big portion of your personal and business communications around this nice centralized system
and then the central authority, be it Google, Microsoft, whoever, change the rules? How does pay-per-message
grab you? What if the service goes down unexpectedly, and you can't simply run and fix it yourself?

Contrary to your point, I'd say nobody in their right mind would entrust an important chunk of the technology around
which they build their lives and their businesses to a single, unaccountable entity.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[burns210]

Have you EVER used e-mail before? Same concept here. Read the article before you trash what you don't understand.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[Xarius]

When people are doing nothing much more than saying "sup?", "k" and "lol" to each other, I don't think security is such a big issue...

Sure, us geeks like to have everything just so and want to know what's going on, but everyone else doesn't care as long as they can watch their cousins craaaaazy cat on the webcam via MSN.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[lahvak]

I like a good top down solution with centralized control because it "just works"...

Yeah, that's right! Like for example the good old Stalins 5 year plans.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[Baloo Ursidae]

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.

Clearly, they do, because s2s is enabled with a secure configuration by default on at least jabberd and ejabberd.

I really don't think anyone in their right mind believes in decentralized stuff unless they're doing something illegal or they're libertarians

You don't believe in email, then? It's been decentralized practically from the moment SMTP standardized.

you don't have to worry about weirdo incompatibilities since you define compatibility.

Very Microsoftian. Is this an Adequacy-style troll?

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[ivan256]

I used to use e-mail constantly, but the signal to noise ratio is like 1:300 these days.

Same concept here.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Yeah, I've used e-mail. I get three or four spams for every real message I get. You know it's bad when spam blocking features become a major selling point of clients.

Translate that into IM - especially XMPP, where spammers can code their own clients as easily as they do for SMTP.

Do you really want a "bulk IM" window in your client? The idea behind Google is that they hook up Gmail first, then connect to other servers with similar quality controls.

Gmail has a secure system for signups - you can only sign up if you have an invite, and you only get a limited number of invites on active accounts. Or you can sign up if you have a cell phone, but they only allow a dozen or so invites by phone. And then they implement DomainKeys and a few other security measures, so that you practically can't spam from Gmail. If you try and get caught, your account gets locked, and they can lock the accounts of everyone you've invited. They're translating this security architecture to Gtalk - and allowing public S2S is going to throw this out the window.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[Holi]

Just one nitpick, DNS is hardly decentralized. out of all the internet protocols DNS is the one where decentralization does not work.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[nine-times]

Does jabber support some sort of privacy? I don't really know, but don't IM services usually allow you to say, "Don't let people contact me or see my status unless they're in this list:"?

If not, they should. Whereas I expect to get occasional e-mails from people I don't know, I don't expect to be sent IM messages from people I don't know.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[labratuk]

No, with IM you only receive messages from people you have authorised (your friends). And if you're getting a SNR or 300:1 with them, it's time to find some new friends.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

That assumes that everyone you know in real life is already on your roster/buddy list. I know far more people in real life than I have on my buddy list, and often times one of them finds my user name and messages me. I want to receive those messages.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[nine-times]

No, it doesn't assume that everyone I know in real life is already on my buddy list. It just assumes that I'm not relying on IM as the primary means of communication for everyone I know in real life. In my mind, giving out your cell phone number or letting people IM you is like saying, "Go ahead, contact me whenever. It's ok, I won't get annoyed." There are very few people I really want to give that message to.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[ivan256]

20 popup windows a day that say "Buy_v1@gra@canadianrx.com wants to add you to their contact list" isn't much better than spam. Worse actually.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[pyros]

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.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[runderwo]

So disable such popups, and when your friends want to talk to you, they can contact you by some other means and ask to be added to your contact list. Whitelisting, instead of greylisting.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[ivan256]

That removes the 'instant' from instant messaging.

There needs to be some sort of collective trust pool... Something that resembles a PGP keyserver that could be used to create custom rules defining what types of people you trust to message you. Sure, you may have to go to a few key signing parties before you would have a big enough web of trust to reliably be able to e-mail anybody you would like to, but that's a fairly low barrier to entry. Until we have something like that, we need to live with the central database of trust.

Replicating the SMTP model and the hacks that sit on top of it for preventing spam is a terrible way to go. Blacklist, whitelisting, and 'greylisting' are all hacks that either introduce problems that are worse than the problems they're solving, only partially solve the problem, or introduce unnecessicarily recurring inconvinenience.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

[runderwo]

Blacklist, whitelisting, and 'greylisting' are all hacks that either introduce problems that are worse than the problems they're solving, only partially solve the problem, or introduce unnecessicarily recurring inconvinenience.

It's true, but since IM is fundamentally the same communications model as SMTP, it is doomed to the same problems that plague SMTP. It's 'push' e-mail with extensions like presence notification, nothing more.

Or maybe

[jockm]

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

Re:Or maybe

[interiot]

GMail was clearly the obvious leader the instant it came out. GTalk isn't a standout at all. Maybe some blog people forced their hand by discovering the talk.google.com working server, but if Google wasn't ready to release yet, they should have shut the public server down, and waited until they were ready to release. Are google products absolute standouts in their field, or not?

Re:Or maybe

[e2d2]

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

I say we weigh them against a duck. If they weigh the same we BUUUUUUUUURRRRRRN THEM! yes BUUUUUUUURRRRRRN.

Why google is held to some higher standard is beyond me. They are just another corporation and the sooner geeks realize this the better.

Re:Or maybe

[jockm]

Wait so because Talk cannot talk to other servers (in the same way that Y!, AIM, ICQ, and MSN can't), it is useless and should be pulled? I'm sorry I just don't see it. At the moment Talk is good enough to launch as a beta.

As for GMail being "clearly the obvious leader the instant it came out," when it launched it couldn't:

+ Read mail from another POP3 source (still can't)
+ Allow the use of other POP3 clients to read mail
+ Export contacts
+ Import contacts
+ Support rich text editing

Re:Or maybe

[interiot]

I'm not pointing to downsides really, more at upsides:

• Google Search blew everything away with far better ranking algorithm than anything else, and wasn't a bloated ad-ridden portal
• GMail blew everything away with 1GB of storage and a decent AJAX interface
• Google Maps blew everything away with heavy reliance on AJAX
• other things weren't quite blow-everything away, but were still good:
  • Google DMOZ combined DMOZ with Google's excellent pagerank
  • Google Groups kept the usenet archive from disapearing
  • Google Images may not be wonderful, but google's core competency is searching, so it has a shot at improving competition among image search engines
  • Google News was new and different
  • the Blogger acquisition allowed Blogger to improve some
  • etc etc

Compared to all that, what benefit does Google Talk provide to customers? No, you can't hide behind "they MIGHT improve it"... Why does Google belong in this market? Is there something they're going to make available that makes it a stand-out? Do Google's existing skills make it likely that they can improve the IM market for consumers?

Or is Google entering that market, simply because they're like Microsoft now, and want to enter every market they possibly can, just because?

Re:Or maybe

[jockm]

So really what made GMail better was 1Gig of storage, not that it was better from a feature perspective. Regardless, I don't think Talk has to be somehow better than everything else to be considered worth doing. And by the bar you have set it is, since it is the only Instant messenger on the market from one of the big vendors that openly allows (and helps you) use third party clients.

That being said, you nor I can say how Talk fits within Google's plans or how it should be used. So I get back to my original point. It is brand new and it is beta, so maybe just maybe we should wait and see what they do. Use it or don't doesn't matter to me, but I don't see why you should declare it not worth the bother

Re:Or maybe

[wandernotlost]

Compared to all that, what benefit does Google Talk provide to customers? No, you can't hide behind "they MIGHT improve it"... Why does Google belong in this market? Is there something they're going to make available that makes it a stand-out? Do Google's existing skills make it likely that they can improve the IM market for consumers?

Google Talk provides the first globally scalable implementation of an open instant messaging protocol. That's a big deal. Sure Jabber existed before now, but jabber.com/jabber.org are relatively unreliable servers and don't have the hype to get "normal" users to use them. Google isn't Microsoft yet.

Still, I think they'll have to at least implement offline messages before they wean me off jabber.org for my geek-friends.

Re:Or maybe

[Blakey Rat]

Are you joking? Gmail lacks some pretty fundamental features... for instance, you can't have it read mail from a POP3 server (although it can serve as a POP3 server.) You can't connect to it using IMAP. When it came out, you couldn't connect to it using a web browser that didn't support Javascript, and Safari support (the default browser for millions of Mac users) was flakey. Hell, you can't even set up a group of contacts and email them all at once, for God's sake... Gmail wasn't "clearly the obvious leader" when it came out, and I wouldn't even say it is now... it's a lot closer, but I just can call something lacking contact groups a "leader."

Re:Or maybe

[adamclarke77]

"Is there something they're going to make available that makes it a stand-out? "

I'm hoping and think they probably will provide me with one simple 'communication' GUI, with which I can easily email, text, talk, chat or whatever
from just about any device
to any of my contacts
on any network
for free.

Now that would stand out!

Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Slashdot editors, please continue to keep me informed of any breaking news stories from this "LiveJournal" news organization.

Re:Excellent

[ink]

Right. Because it's not News unless it comes from CNN or Fox, I suppose. I think you're at the wrong website.

Re:Text

[aussie_a]

Aaah yes. Slashdot, infringing people's copyright since 1997. It's Livejournal. It won't get slashdotted.

If only

[masklinn]

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

• File transferts
• Offline messages (how the heck did they manage to be that stupid?
• Gateways to MSN, ICQ, Y!M, AIM, IRC ...
• Group chats
• Jabber User Directory and vCards

Re:If only

[IamTheRealMike]

Given that rather shocking list of missing features, I'm assuming they are writing their own server from scratch and they haven't implemented file transfers yet (given how many ways to do that in Jabber there are I'm not surprised). Maybe S2S support is missing for the same reason?

Last I heard the official Jabber servers were pretty scalable but I'd bet a LOT that they were never designed to be scalable to Google sizes. Google writing their own distributed swarm of servers sounds more likely all the time to me.

Re:If only

[TheRaven64]

I wouldn't be surprised if ejabberd is. I've recently started using Erlang on a project that needs to run on large clusters, and I'm amazed at how difficult it is to write code that doesn't scale well in it.

Re:If only

[altan]

Beta software is supposed to be feature complete.

Re:If only

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

It's only been released for one weekend! I suppose that if you were releasing a webmail service in Beta, you'd have included attachments, HTML mail, DomainKeys, SSL, etc. on the first day?

Google's trying to generate buzz, not build the best IM client there is. They'll get around to that part in a couple of months.

As far as gateways, they left it out for two reasons. The first is the same reason that they left out S2S - security. They're really possessive about "their" network (and with some justification). The second is that gateways violate most IM EULAs (the part about "use only this Software to access our Service"), and to make sure that they work with the official clients, the programmers would have to install the client (and accept the EULA). And to find the protocol, they'd have to tap someone else's connection, who'd be violating the "don't help others to do this stuff" clause.

They could implement TOC (the AIM Express protocol), I guess. It used to be GPL'd, and the GPL doesn't have a termination clause technically.

Re:If only

[14erCleaner]

Offline messages (how the heck did they manage to be that stupid?

Maybe they didn't want to create a second email system; they already have GMail.

Re:If only

[DdJ]

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.)

Re:If only

[ipb]

> * File transferts

I suspect legal had something to say about this.

> * Offline messages (how the heck did they manage to be that stupid?

Could they may be concerned about the amount of storage required to hang on to all those messages until someone gets around to logging in?

> * Gateways to MSN, ICQ, Y!M, AIM, IRC ...

What do you think their "federation" program is all about? They're not about to set up transports to everyone else and get summarily cut off like lots of other jabber servers. Instead they announce a program and make the other guys look bad for not cooperating.

> * Group chats

Again I suspect their may be a reluctance to implement group chats because of the legal implications. To many people associated Group chats/chat rooms with luring children into evil ways.

> * Jabber User Directory and vCards

Agreed on this one, where the heck is it?

Re:If only

[marcansoft]

Because file transfer (or rather, the initiation thereof) is just information exchange between clients, and AFAIK the server does not need to know about that. I'd bet you can get the whiteboard or chess plugins in tkabber to work too.

Re:If only

[masklinn]

I suspect legal had something to say about this.

File transfert is a basic feature of IMs, ICQ had it 5 years ago, MSN has it now, I fail to see how it would be a legal issue for google if it isn't for anyone else.

Could they may be concerned about the amount of storage required to hang on to all those messages until someone gets around to logging in?

Come on, we're talking about Google here, the ones who said "hey, let's give everyone a gigabyte to store their mails" and currently hand you 2.5 Gb for free when you create a GMail account...

They could even store offline messages IN the gmail account of the recipient if they really wanted, or implement a message decay (6 months or something) for the offline queue, but don't tell me that Google lacks *storage space*

What do you think their "federation" program is all about? They're not about to set up transports to everyone else and get summarily cut off like lots of other jabber servers. Instead they announce a program and make the other guys look bad for not cooperating.

Yeah, that was probably the most (only?) logical thing *not* to implement, but it's still missing

Again I suspect their may be a reluctance to implement group chats because of the legal implications. To many people associated Group chats/chat rooms with luring children into evil ways.

Yeah, google groups is ok cause there is no one actually bad there, and IM confs are bad, cause... you could lure more people in than in single chats... or something

Re:If only

[labratuk]

Offline messages (how the heck did they manage to be that stupid?)

My guess is that a 'usability guru' told them that when you want to send an offline message, what you really want to do is send them an email. Thanks.

Re:If only

[Eric Wasgatt]

On the other hand, I was delighted that there's finally a windows chat client people are likely to use, which is bloat free, and isn't at all invasive, and which I'm happy to install on my windows boxes. It (google talk) works with iChat, so all my Mac contacts are already taken care of. Heck, it even works with the IM client I use for work (PSI).

It's as open as I care about, given it's a BETA product, with promises of future interoperability. Patience is a virtue.

It's a damn fine start, and already far better for basic chat than the commercial competition.

Yay google!

Re:If only

[HorsePunchKid]

Please refer all of your complaints to the second letter of the Greek alphabet.

beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[Danathar]

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"

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right, a 'beta'. Is there ANY Google service today which does NOT say 'beta'???

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[El_Muerte_TDS]

wth... there is sliced bread?

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[wootest]

"Google Web Search".

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[dhakbar]

The search engine.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[Serpent Mage]

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.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[ScriptedReplay]

So somehow it being a perpetual beta (if any of the *other* Gogle services outside searches are any indication) makes it OK to have feature-free software? Beta software is supposed to be feature-complete and out to fix bugs, not test for feature requests. That's what pre-alpha is for, technically. Adding more features would make it a version bump, you know, as in GTalk 1.1

It's dumb to trash a beta for bugs, as finding those it the purpose of the exercise. Missing features are a different issue.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[coolGuyZak]

That was definitely true some time ago... however, trends are starting to move more towards the following:

• Pre-alpha: conceptualizing stage. Happens in front of one or a few programmers
• Alpha: Internal bug testing. Not released to the public, usually.
• Beta: Release to the public. Usually feature-rich, but not always. (See OSS)
• Release-candidate: Iron out the bugs
• Release: w00t. Time to spill your beer on the server.

Rinse and repeat beta & RC for every next release, when such a thing exists.

As far as google's betas go... They are using them to collect popular opinion, and implementing what people want, and what they will actually use. Why does GMail not support PGP/GPG encryption? Because most of their users didn't want it. If we were all privacy fanatics, though... then it would have been added in the beta.

Another thing about google betas: They tend to lack on the features, but be pretty tolerant of bugs. I'd much rather have a fault-tolerent beta that lacks features than a fault-laden beta where something new breaks with each release.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[jeremyds]

I believe that Google has come up with one of the most clever marketing schemes ever: Release all products with the word "Beta" attached to it.

How many of Google's products are *not* in beta? I mean seriously, Google Groups has been out for over two years and is still considered in beta! I'm not saying that Google releases buggy or incomplete products. Far from it. I'm just getting tired of people using it as an excuse.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[artjermyn]

I'm still trashing it. That sumbitch wumpus still hasn't accepted my invite.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[Belgarath52]

Given that Google doesn't seem to actually take things out of beta, it's no surprise.

If I use a beta from Microsoft/RedHat/anyone else, it's clearly pre-production. GMail, Google News, and so on are all called beta products, but they're clearly production systems.

Why should the beta label shield them from all complaints when they're using it like this?

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[Sparks23]

Yeah, pretty much. It's disappointing, but it's also worth withholding final judgment until they're actually done.

To be fair, s2s is a real headache to implement. I can absolutely see Google wanting to open Google Talk and get people playing with it to test the load-balancing on their servers while they work with s2s.

I mean, the fact that they have made a decentralized, stable IM server capable taking on that many connections is not something to be sneezed at; it's not revolutionary, but it's also still a lot of work. They didn't use a stock XMPP server, after all.

The fact that it speaks XMPP is great. Yeah, it doesn't do everything in XMPP yet -- s2s, it doesn't support storing off vCards, it doesn't support pubsub or even disco -- but presumably they'll continue to work on it.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[dcam]

Well I am sick of Google never moving products out of Beta. Google has effectively redfined the use of the word beta. So, you can hardly complain when people disregard the word beta on a google release.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[Breakfast Pants]

When they are using it as is it should shield them from "but this feature isn't here" type complaints but not "this thing is totally broken" complaints. Granted that means they are using it as a bit of a misnomer but I think anyone who has followed them for a bit can see what they mean by 'beta' as opposed to what 'beta' traditionally means.

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

[WilliamSChips]

And before anybody says "BETA means nothing on Google", remember this: IT'S ONLY BEEN OUT FOR A WEEK.

nice FUD piece

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:nice FUD piece

[mdwh2]

(from http://www.google.com/talk/developer.html#service)

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. We are using the federation opportunity with EarthLink and Sipphone to develop a set of guidelines by which all members of the federated network can work together to ensure that we protect our users while maximizing the reach of the network.

So, you'd better hope that they allow your Jabber server to join their network.

Also, I'm pretty sure that if you actually read TFA, he mentions:

While Google is busy cheerleading their openness and freedom of choice the closest thing to an open network they seem to be considering is pre-arranged formal peering agreements with just a select few of the large Jabber service providers. There are some popular ones out there and it's probably fair to expect that people who use the public @jabber.org Jabber server may someday be able to communicate with @gmail.com Jabber users. But it doesn't sound like Google is considering embracing the true spirit of open communications by using Jabber as it was designed. It's no help for those of us who already have a connection to the public Jabber network.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[2nd Post!]

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 :)

Re:Google starting to change?

[Rude Turnip]

"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.

Encryption support?

[base3]

No way I'm going to pass plaintext through Google to be mined and added to my electronic dossier. So unless it has encryption support with verifiably no back door, it's a non-starter for me.

Re:Encryption support?

[ivan256]

Every IM service that Gaim supports has encryption support whether the IM service provider knows it or not.

Re:Encryption support?

[RinzeWind]

If you use Gaim (and several other clients, but that's the one I use) there's a very nice plugin called Off-the-Record Messaging that allows you to encrypt your communications, no matter which protocol you are using (MSN, Jabber, Yahoo... you name it).

Re:Encryption support?

[TheRaven64]

There still isn't a good protocol for end to end encryption over Jabber. The problem is that you need some way of exchanging keys that can be done over an untrusted network, and such a thing doesn't really exist. I've been pushing for a web-of-trust based approach, and there seems to be some support for it, but it will take a while before it is adopted. In the mean time, there are a few clients which use things like GPG and rely on exchanging keys out-of-band (or use the old GPG JEP which is laughably insecure).

Re:Encryption support?

[InvisiBill]

http://www.google.com/talk/about.html

Google Talk currently does not encrypt chats or calls. But we are working hard to make many improvements to Google Talk while it is in beta, and we plan to fully support encryption of chats and calls before our official release.

Re:Encryption support?

[slavemowgli]

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.

Re:Encryption support?

[rgovostes]

Isn't that the whole idea behind public key encryption? It doesn't matter if it's an untrusted network, as long as the key sizes are sufficient, no one will be able to read the encrypted messages.

Re:Encryption support?

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Encryption support?

[tjw]

I use Psi to communicate with co-workers who use Google Talk (just migrated from ICQ., yay). Psi is probably what you're refering to that enables GnuPG encryption over jabber, but uses out-of-band key exchange for GnuPG.

I just don't see the problem with this. If I want to use encryption to communicate with someone, I want to communicate directly with them and request their public key. I don't want to trust software to manage my trust for me. I don't need encrypted communication from everyone I communicate with, and for those I do, I already have their pub keys.

Another point is that Google's service runs over SSL (at least I think it does) so encryption from outside parties is already there, GnuPG just offers ecryption from Google.

Re:Encryption support?

[YoungHack]

I expect a client like gaim to do OTR messaging (off-the-record) just fine through Google Talk, as long as the other side had support too (i.e. not the official client).

Re:Encryption support?

[daveewart]

Using "out-of-band" key exchange is preferred, I would have thought. If you wish to be sure of the identity of your correspondent, then you really *should* check the keys "out-of-band", because otherwise you've got no idea who you're talking to. On the other hand, if you're trying to communicate securely with someone who you only know online, then perhaps you'd rather just take your chances.

Just an "Open Comment" on Google/Jabber

[verbatim_verbose]

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...

Re:Just an "Open Comment" on Google/Jabber

[ab384]

Have a look at: http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0637.html -- it's a bit on the long side but there's some interesting material for pondering over in there.

Re:Just an "Open Comment" on Google/Jabber

[Anonymous Coward]

Acutally, my take on that is that they're not making it an exclusive group as you suggest, just not allowing completely unrestricted access to the world. Anyone who runs a server could work with them, if they're willing to cooperate on authentication and spam control.

Somewhat similar really to how people running SMTP servers cooperate with others, except that they're starting with a whitelist instead of gradually blacklisting abusers.

Re:google talk BETA

[Packet Pusher]

I thought it was a Google product family

Gmail Beta
Gmaps Beta
Gtalk Beta

It sounds like S2S is on the way....

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaders in the jabber community have made it fairly clear that s2s support just hasn't been coded yet. Its on its way.

Re:It sounds like S2S is on the way....

[Nugget]

Yes, but it's important to remember that the leaders in the Jabber community do not work for Google. They can't speak for Google and have only a little bit more insight into Google's plans than we do.

What we do know is that Google doesn't appear to consider S2S important enough to have built yet, and their public position on the subject is more discouraging than it is encouraging. It is not fairly clear that S2S is on its way.

SPAM control..

[cowmix]

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.

Re:so

[oscrmyer]

I 100% agree, we are becoming our own worst nightmere. But we can be happy that we have slashdotted LJ, now all the 14 year olds can not write about how much life sucks as a middle class white kid :(.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[burns210]

Yes, there is a client. GAIM, the most popular IM software on Linux can connect to a jabber server with ease. As can Apple's own iChat IM software.

Google Talk, the software, is Windows only though.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[FidelCatsro]

Apple has iChat or Adium (a few others)
Linux has Gaim or Kopete(also a fair few others)
I know there is a windows port of Gaim and i suspect Miranda supports Jabber also

Imagine if this would be done..

[b100dian]

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

Re:Imagine if this would be done..

[Stonehand]

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.


It's not going to happen, unless Google provides a compelling reason why the much larger, closed IM communities should open their gates. The other services want users to join and stay with them, and to assist their revenue streams.

Google asking the far larger, established, commercially motivated IM networks to open up would be like a new, upstart cellular service provider asking Verizon and T-Mobile to open up their 'In'/'Mobile to Mobile' promotions. Google would gain far, far more than AOL/MSN/Y! would.

Re:Imagine if this would be done..

[b100dian]

would be like a new, upstart cellular service provider asking Verizon and T-Mobile to open up their 'In'/'Mobile to Mobile' promotions

Yes and no.

Imagine "Verizon and T-Mobile" using hard-wired-identified cellphones, and the upstart service provider using SIMs with any SIM-compliant cellphone.
All users of the upstart service can choose their telephone (IM client) while old provider clients would be stuck to 5-10 models (one, in the IM case).
The only way the old providers would attract more users is by having special features not found on other phones.

Y! has audibles for example
Skype has good voice capability and the ability to actually call somebody on the phone
MSN has.. well.. it will have something..
etc.

Choosing to use one of the proprietary clients would enable you to use their features.
Choosing alternatives (such as any Jabber client) would enable you to use the client of choice.
...
I haven't said Google would directly force somebody.. clients will.

(remember, if and only if they open their jabber server!)

Re:Imagine if this would be done..

[Stonehand]

In this case, being able to IM a user of a closed network can be considered a 'special feature' of that closed network -- nobody else is permitted to do it.

If you regularly IM a dozen people, for instance, and they're all on the same closed network -- there's less incentive to move to somebody else's network unless you can persuade the dozen people to move over with you, or you enjoy running multiple clients or multi-protocol clients. If they're all interoperable, then the cost of moving is much less, and AOL/Y!/MSN have to consider the effects of that. Now, there may be incentives for AOL/Y!/MSN to eventually be interoperable with each other, given the sizes of each others' audiences -- but Google Talk doesn't bring a big membership to the table.

Re:Imagine if this would be done..

[Lehk228]

MSN has.. well.. it will have something..

msn has the client preinstalled with windows

Jabber features

[Craig Ringer]

Hmm... how many of those are features of the protocol, as opposed to features of one or more of the main server implementations?

I can easily understand why they might want to omit offline messages, for example. In addition to the matter of storage (which they're probably not that bothered about) there's the issue that they must then store and forward messages. That may be legally different to a direct "switching" rely or direct user<->user comms.

The gateways are probably a legal thing, and again probably a feature of specific server implementations.

As for file transfers and group chat, I don't get that. I can only imagine that to be client limitations - or do they not work even with 3rd party clients?

Re:Jabber features

[tiptone]

Hmm... how many of those are features of the protocol, as opposed to features of one or more of the main server implementations?

I don't think anyone has just added anything to their server implementation, most added "things" are specified in a JEP somewhere.

In addition to the matter of storage (which they're probably not that bothered about) there's the issue that they must then store and forward messages.

That's part of the protocol, should just be an implementation detail of where to store the users "spool", as XML or in a database.

I agree with the rest, I'm sure most missed features will come along after Beta (or during). If it had been me I wouldn't have rolled out s2s yet either.

why not release an osx port?

[Tibor the Hun]

Why didn't they release an os X port?

Sure, iChat on Tiger supports it, and if you don't have Tiger, you can do Adium, or Fire, but that's not an optional solution for a lot of us. (My parents for example are on a dial-up connection in eastern europe and don't speak english.)

Was it so hard to design a client for OS X?

Re:why not release an osx port?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

I beat him to it.

[wang33]

My rant about the lack of s2s and transports was posted on the 24th.
Granted his is about 20x longer than mine.
He could've started writing his the same time as me and just finished it 2 days later...

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...they must deliver applications that run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X.

I disagree. There is a huge difference between a service and an application. So long as the service is open and documented, they can make applications for whatever platforms they want. The google talk client application is truly a beta. It is Windows only, very no frills, and is missing a boatload of nice features. that is just fine, it's a beta. People who complain about missing features in a free, beta application need a beating with a clue-stick.

They have already announced OS X and Linux versions of the client, but who really cares? Just use a third-party chat client like everyone already does anyway. iChat ships on pretty much every mac, GAIM on most linux distributions. Google has a nice page of instruction on how to set each of them up to use Google Talk, and instructions for several other chat clients as well. I don't see what the problem is.

Re:so

[wootest]

A presidental address or a Nobel prize speech are both delivered through word of mouth, and drunken ramblings about how ugly that guy in the corner is is also word of mouth - they have nothing else in common. I don't see how this article has anything in common with the "let's analyze at my lunch, oh and life sucks" stereotype people like to hold out to be the epitome of LiveJournal - other than the delivery medium. Likewise, would you consider it fair if you discussed quantum physics in a comment, and the rest of the world modded you a troll because "hey, it's a comment"?

Let's not get into the dumb and shallow habit of deriding a message because of its medium.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

[NoHandleBars]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to rant just a bit because I've found many things Google has done to be incomplete. Like another company we so enthusiastically bash for putting out products that take several iterations before even getting close to the feature set first anticipated, I've seen this with Google. For instance, gmail doesn't handle HTML email, to name 1 of a number of shortcomings when compared to other rival online offerings. I'd like to see them solidify and expand on such basics, but they seem to always be partially implementing something else to expand the overall base of subset-implemented apps. I know, I know...I'm a heretic, so let the flaming begin...

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes

[DoktorTomoe]

For instance, gmail doesn't handle HTML email, to name 1 of a number of shortcomings when compared to other rival online offerings.

This is not a shortcomming, but a feature. Please show me where HTML emails are mentioned in RFC822 :)

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes

[NoHandleBars]

No, they don't and I have the tickets with Google to prove it. I send out an HTML email newsletter and subscribe to many services such as gmail for testing and to see how things look to the consumer. Gmail flunks big time and there support continues to acknowledge, "Yeah". But that's just one of the symptoms that speaks to the disease of pushing out the incomplete and not coming back to address.

Uh...who CARES about RFC822? Let's go with the expectations of providing features and content on par with rivals and not satisfying the nit-picky trivia of the geek hordes.

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes

[DoktorTomoe]

Uh...who CARES about RFC822?

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.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[prell]

Supporting Windows is a tough decision for me. Apart from money-ability, it is true that most people use Windows. I'd argue that the decision to use Windows at home is largely a result of ignorance on the part of consumers, but if I'm going to try and bring something good into peoples' lives, it's hard for me to actually say "no" to Windows. However, I acknowledge that the continued support of Windows by software developers must be a major reason that Windows continues to exist and be the major consumer operating system. So, my decision is hard, though I'd prefer not to develop for Windows at all. Interestingly, Windows was last on my list for platforms I'd like to support on my new application (behind OS X and Linux), and only because of the acknowledged market-share.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[ivan256]

[...] using gAIM [...]

Gah! It's 'Gaim', not 'gAIM'! Are you trying to get somebody sued!? ;)

Biggest missing feature everyone seems to miss

[chargen]

Where the *hell* are the typewriter key sounds?

How do I know I'm actually typing anything without it? :-)

-chargen

Speaking as a layman...

[Evro]

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...

Re:Speaking as a layman...

[Blikkie]

Don't like gaim under windows? Try Miranda-IM. It ain't perfect, but it is fast, minimal and extendable (tip of the week: tabbed message windows). Like Gaim better though, it just works.

Re:Speaking as a layman...

[mothlos]

JAJC is already taken as the name of a jabber client.

The whole idea of embracing an open protocol is that anybody can easily make a client for it. So far Jabber clients aren't all that hot in many respects but until it becomes way popular we aren't going to see the kind of choice that we will if Google Chat becomes big and stays open, which this article does a good job of expressing my concern in this regard.

As for Gaim, I personally don't like it for some of the same reasons, it is just feels like too much duct tape is holding it together most days and it doesn't play well with other aps on my comp, namely my OS.

Wait a tick...

[Moofie]

You mean a beta service is not feature complete? Stop the presses. Or something.

Get a GRIP, people...

Duh

[oPless]

This is the bloody first thing I tried when I connected to google talk. Running a jabberd in S2S mode is not a /requirement/ of a jabberd *AT ALL* As his edited article admits that he knows that not all jabberds need nor require S2S functionality. In fact has he even RTFM'd the jabberd's manual at all *sigh*. Nugget? F*ck Nugget more like! Seriously, someone with a decent CV really needs to lay off the caffine pills before they end up talking as much sh*t as rms about gnu-everything. (rant over)

When they (google) actually went to press they specifically stated that the DNS SRV records were not active - which allows discovery of the host running the jabberd for that domain.

I don't see the reason for sensationalist claptrap for a beta service, hell do you REALLY want to support voice comms to someone@jabber.org when you're *starting* to roll out a project?

Yes but...

[sterno]

Here's the thing. A number of people are saying how wonderful it is that google's using an open protocol like Jabber. This is merely pointing out that it's not as open as you might think.

Personally I'm thrilled with google's opennes even if it isn't the full monty so to speak. I've been using GAIM and/or Trillian for a very long time, and I'm sick of the proprietary reverse engineered protocols occasionally changing and breaking. I've occasionally gone weeks without being able to chat with some friends because of such things. No it's not the end of the world, but it's quite annoying.

So it's not perfect, but it's a lot better. That seems to be google's running theme. Most everything they have is in beta and not quite perfect but it's all much better than the competition.

Re:jabber users?

[TheRaven64]

I use Jabber. Most of my geek friends use Jabber. Most of my non-geek friends use MSN Messenger, and a few use AIM (it's a lot less popular in Europe). Jabber is good for me because I just have a single account and I can use that to talk to all of the people on my Jabber, AIM and MSNM contact lists.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And Picassa? And Desktop? And Hello?

Picassa is something they acquired, not developed. Desktop is in beta still and fills a niche on Windows that does not really exist on the Mac or on Linux. It is making up for obvious deficiencies in Windows and lets you do things that are already easy on most Macs and Linux machines. Hello was acquired along with Picasa.

Don't you think it is a little bit of a stretch to complain about a lack of OS X and Linux client for a beta application that is still missing a huge chunk of core features, especially when OS X and Linux versions are already announced? Also, when there is an easy work-around that is even more functional than the Windows only version? iChat and GAIM are both more functional and easier to use than Google's talk client. I don't see the problem.

Patience you fools patience

[Ingolfke]

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

Re:Patience you fools patience

[coolGuyZak]

In the strictest sense, no. The person who wrote the article should talk to Google, rather than getting /. in a tizzy. (As a matter of fact, he is on the Google Group, he just posted this in addition).

In his defense, though: it was a very well thought article, and after talking with him, I think it's a good idea. I hope he wasn't the one to post his opinion to /. though. (Eg. I hope it was some random /.er who was lurking GG).

Re:google talk BETA

[altan]

Feature complete.

Could be a security issue

[mightypenguin]

I don't claim to understand the whole Jabber protocol, but it seems to me that having decentralized servers might be a security problem, and be a disadvantage when everyone and their brother can throw together a jabber server.

Once Google allows the other servers to be used with it's own service, it's giving them legitimacy. That's something that people should be careful with. It would be cool if there was some kind of verification system with the server operators, say something similar to personal SSL key verification that people like Thawte were doing before being aquired by Verisign.

There's also the issue of everyone using google's server's as the nexus of the entire jabber network if google started working with other jabber servers.

KISS

[tsanth]

It's a damned shame that you got modded down for expressing your opinion. Personally, I feel much the same about it as you do. I won't be using GTalk as my main IM program until (even assuming that) they start getting linked up with other servers (providers email federation@google.com, as per their FAQ) and their client gets more polished.

At the risk of sounding like an apologist: it is beta, and for something like IM, it does make sense to start simple. In this case, they started really simple. That doesn't mean that I'll use it now, of course, but I'm holding out hope for the future.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[2nd Post!]

iChat is bundled with the Mac
Gaim I think is similarly bundled with Linux distros; at least some kind of Jabber-chat

NONE are bundled with Windows; the user has to download them

In which case, it makes sense for Google to release one to 'rule them all'. On the other platforms, Google has to compete with the 'built-ins'. Not so on Windows

Re:It's still beta...

[ScriptedReplay]

I am sure we'll have it the moment we are out of beta.

Famous last words?

heh, had to try. Google fans, lighten up, it loks like your favorite corporation redefined "beta" - and it's OK, it just confuses the heck out of some people. They'll have the features when in whatever beta release they'll want them (if they do want them) Just don't hold your breath for "out of beta."

not true

[fbartho]

When was the last time you used gmail?

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.documen t.forms;for(i=0;i
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.

Two Words

[Geekbot]

Beta...

BETA!

Re:Two Words

[amrust]

It's From Red Dwarf. ;)

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[Lumpy]

and all they had to do was write it in python with wxpython and it would have een able to run on anything easily.

and yes kiddies you can make a windows app in python that even a windows newbie can install and run easily.

py2exe does a fantastic job of making the windows app an exe and supporting file pile for an installer to toss on the machine, the same app runs under linux as well as OsX.. it's a great RAD language that put's everything else to shame.

There's more to IM than chat between people

[criquet]

I'd expect an information company like Google to be interested in the information delivery aspect of IM over it's interperson communications capabilities.
IM is a combination email-webbrowser that can deliver information between clients (like email) on request (like a browser). Will google offer IM-bots to deliver content? Seems reasonable to me.
Also, offline IM is email! In fact, I log all my IM conversations to my mail folders so that they are searchable along with my other main form of communication, email. What I've never understood is why email and IM aren't the same application. I think (hope) Google is taking us there.

Re:There's more to IM than chat between people

[bmalia]

Will google offer IM-bots to deliver content? Kind of goes against the whole "Do No Evil" thing, don't you think?

Re:There's more to IM than chat between people

[criquet]

How so? I loved activebuddy. They don't push content to you. You request it. Connect to a bot and ask for stock quotes, the weather, driving driections, ... How is that evil?

Re:There's more to IM than chat between people

[bmalia]

Personally, I'd rather use the web to ask for stock quotes, weather, or driving directions.

So how do you get the public keys?

[roystgnr]

If there's no hostile party on a hop between you and the person you're talking to, you don't need any encryption because nobody is reading your packets.

If there is a hostile party on a hop between you and the person you're talking to, public key encryption is risky unless you already have your correspondent's public key - because if you just ask him for that key over the compromised channel, you can't be sure whether what you get back is really his public key or whether it's the attacker's public key. The attacker can simply decrypt everything you send him and then reencrypt it with your real correspondent's key, and neither of you can tell anything's wrong.

That's why you should have a web of trust (this key is digitally signed by someone whose key was signed by someone whose key was signed by someone I know) or certifying authority (this key is digitally signed by Verisign) or out-of-band (I called my correspondent on the phone last week and verified the hash of the key he'd sent me) means of key verification.

Even without a verified key, though, public key encryption is better than nothing. There are more people who can read your data than people who can rewrite it, so a defense that only works against the former group is still worthwhile. For that matter, even verified keys aren't bulletproof - they only protect against attacks from all the networks bouncing your packets around. If your own computer or your correspondents' have been compromised, you could be using one time pads and it would't matter.

Re:so

[hyperstation]

i don't think it's shallow. *NEWS* for nerds, stuff that matters - livejournal, myspace, or some nerds blog is not a valid news source.

referencing such "sources" as real news (hell, referencing slashdot as real news) only makes this place look worse.

and mods, you can eat me.

I understand why...

[Maljin Jolt]

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.

Not SO difficult...

[TigerTale]

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.

It can be as simple as whether the blog entry is entitled Windows 2003: The Top 10 Reg Hacks, or Why My Girlfriend Hates My Cyst.

Re:so

[wootest]

Some of the best things I've ever seen on Slashdot (like, but surely not limited to, this one) weren't news in any sense of the word (or by your definition). Furthermore, I think it's fairly obvious that Slashdot doesn't need to restrict its publishing guidelines to its motto (which, almost per definition, is mostly for show).

Personally, I care much more about the contents of the piece than I care about what people might label the medium it was published in, or whether it would qualify as "news" or not.

Too Early to Speculate

[cmacb]

Well, I'll be the 50th person to comment that it is a bit too soon (less than a week isn't it?) to criticize them for not having S2S support when they plainly state that that is one of their primary goals. DUH. Clearly they are not finished yet.

As to the article, which was far too long for the amount of actual information it contained, there were no revelations in it other than that which would be dictated by common sense. That common sense was cloak in a shroud of innuendo, inside sources, and conspiracy.

If in fact AOL, MSN and Yahoo cooperate with one another in some way to fend off the now "evil" Google, all users will be better off than before. They key prediction made by the article and the one on which the veracity of his sources can be measured is the notion that all three companies are going to suddenly obsolete their own IM clients and replace them with some surprising new thing.

That would indeed be a coup for this blogger to have gotten early word on such an event. In the mean time if you believe it, please contact me to make large bets on the subject.

The other thing not mentioned by the article or much of the speculation I've seen on it is that at least some of the IM protocols use peer to peer connections once the two parties have located one another. Remember, if everyone in the universe had a fixed IP address there would probably have never been a need for IM clients at all. Once two parties have identified that they are both on at the same time a direct connection can (and probably should) be established. The only reason we needed servers in the first place was because everyone's IP address keeps changing these days.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[DustyShadow]

I acknowledge that the continued support of Windows by software developers must be a major reason that Windows continues to exist and be the major consumer operating system.

The only reason that I continue to use Windows is because of games. If all games ran fine on Linux, then I'd switch over completely and never look back.

Re:so

[hyperstation]

that's fine; we'll agree to disagree. i do agree that the content of the article is most important, but i also believe that the source, along with grammar, spelling and citations lend more credence to the text. however, i'm sure you can agree on this: the quality of the articles and editing on slashdot has greatly decreased in the past say, 4 years.

and i remember that graphing calculator story, interesting...

What is wrong with all of you

[rabbot]

I'm very suprised at how many of you so quickly forget that this service is in beta, and has only been in beta for a week at that. Wait until a product is actually released before complaining about missing features.

Anybody tried it?

[wayne606]

Has anybody who runs a Jabber server tried sending email to federation@google.com to see whether and how fast they respond to the request? It's just stupid to speculate on what their motives might be without first taking their word for it that they want to interoperate with "qualified" peers.

Besides, not everybody and their dog is going to be running a Jabber server. As mentioned before, large companies will do it for security reasons, but there are probably few enough of those that google will have no problem accomodating them.

iChat in Tiger does Jabber...are they compatible?

[SuperBanana]

Why didn't they release an os X port?

Well, given iChat is Jabber compatible, and Google Talk is Jabber based...

Well, shouldn't the two work together?

No emoticons, actually

[LPetrazickis]

Point: Google's client doesn't have emoticons.

Yes I did, and this is what I got

[LaBola]

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".

Give some feedback, then!

[kelnos]

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.

Re:Google starting to change?

[Momoru]

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.

What has changed is that now Google MAKES money relative to its stock price, which is influenced by market hype, yes you could argue their old stock made some money from venture capitialists, but not $4 bil in one day type money.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

[budgenator]

Google Talk isn't so much about Jabber, but VOIP
actualy Jabber is about routing XML to dynamic IP asddresses, it realy doesn't care if the XML is webpages, images, video, one-way or bidirectional; if you can pack the data between some XML tags, jabber will get it their. Its up to the client to decide what to do with it. To say Google Talk isn't so much about Jabber, but VOIP is like saying the internet isn't so much about usenet as it is about Email!

Re:so

[wootest]

that's fine; we'll agree to disagree.

Thanks for being civil and making sense. I'll take one last chance to defend my view - not to pick a fight but only because your reasoning, while accurate, almost asks the question itself.

Proper grammar, spelling and sources certainly help your cause if you want your text to say "I'm credible". But sometimes, good reading and certainly nice revelations can come from people outside of respected news sites. (The whole ea_spouse thing, for instance.)

As has been mentioned, the article this comment is attached to actually is incorrect for reasons mentioned otherwise, but had it *been* correct, I don't reckon it should have been exempt from being spread via Slashdot simply because it was written on someone's LiveJournal. Had the news agencies picked it up, where would they have gotten their story? The guy's LiveJournal. I don't see how Slashdot, in the eyes of some, is somehow 'above' this, and I certainly don't think that stories appear out of thin air without these exact kinds of sources to start them off. That closes my argument, as I believe in letting people think what they want to think (like you say: "agree to disagree").

I've only been reading Slashdot for three years and haven't been noting any particular falls in quality - but this could easily be due to people being blind to the status quo, and it's likely that the quality *has* detoriated and that I'm just green enough to not notice. It's true that they sometimes get spelling wrong and that dupes are many, but for every article with that kind of error are five published articles without that kind of error, and surely 150 unpublished suggestions that have to be weighed against each other and against the crop of the day. I don't think that the editing job is as easy as one might imagine.

As for the qualities of the actual articles, that's a bit tougher. I don't think I've ever seen an article by an editor (not based on submitted material) that hasn't been accused of bias or agenda-pushing. I don't think it's the fault of the editors if it's actually a "slow news day" and there are less than stellar articles that get published because there's not really much that's better. And I certainly don't complain loudly about "money-grubbing opportunists" when some poor sod tries to break even on his bandwidth bill by including some Google ads as a security measure. (However, there are definite blunders like the whole Roland Piquepaille affair. There's simply no excuse for that.)

Re:It's still beta...

[tgrimley]

Good ol' Redundant mod on an honest question.

If you are careful, public key not bad.

[Junta]

Particularly if you don't immediately use such an exchange to send anything sensitive, and you connect a day later while both are at different locations, the probablity that someone was eavesdropping is reduced.

But the true strength would be over some independent, hard to modify channel verify the key fingerprints. You make a phone call or skype session and validate the key that made it all the way unmolested. Hard to change a voice convincingly on the fly to say something completely different. Even sending the text as payload would be enough for most things, but it would then be feasible for it to anylze IM payload to try to detect and modify such challenges.

In the long run, I've never relied on gaim-encryption for much important, but it would be highly difficult to keep hijacked an even moderately mobile set of people who use multiple machines with the same key without them noticing..

There is no full proof way to do it really. With a CA or web of trust, it can be falsified, so long as any one member of the 'web of trust' or one CA can be duped, the system becomes flawed, and gives false sense of security.

Damn...

[Premo_Maggot]

everyone needs to relax, it's still in beta.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Me too

[defsdoor]

ditto

My Email to Google

[Robotron2084]

I've been a fan of Jabber for years now, and use it heavily. I was very happy to hear that Google Talk used the Jabber server, but completely disheartened to hear that server-to-server communications don't exist. Why do you choose to create yet another closed IM network? I don't want a gmail account, but I would like to talk to your gmail users with my existing jabber account. What you have created is NOT OPEN, and NOT JABBER but a bastardised subset of its protocols and ideals.

Open up your servers!!!

Re:My Email to Google

[kg4czo]

I know I'm repeating a lot of what's been said before, but the reason they didn't completely open their servers in this phase of their beta testing is because:

1.) To cut down on "spim."
2.) To make sure it scales for their users before opening it up to others.

Why do they have to open it up right now? They've only been open about a week. I know exactly how annoying all the bots are on YIM, and I'm sure Google does too. They'll open it up, but in a controlled kind of way, or we'd see what happened to YIM, MSN, and AIM, happen to GTalk. That'd just suck purple donkey gonads....

Google: we "federate" with "service providers"

[CoughDropAddict]

Listen to Google's stated position on this:

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. We are using the federation opportunity with EarthLink and Sipphone to develop a set of guidelines by which all members of the federated network can work together to ensure that we protect our users while maximizing the reach of the network. We are also eager to hear from other people in the industry about how best to build a federation model that is open, scalable, and ensures best-in-class user experiences.

Doesn't sound like the floodgates are going to be thrown open for s2s communications. Google hand-picks who they will talk to ("federate with", in their words).

Mobile phone IM?

[slutsatchel]

It seems to me that lots of people are switching over to mobile phone text messaging. In addition phones are now capable of exchanging multi-media content (speaking to how IM client file transfer just doesn't work).

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?

Hey, that's me...

[cduffy]

...and they haven't given me any response, either in public or from my private email (w/ the same content) to their federation link.

Seven Reasons Why Google Talk Kicks Ass

[jcummins]

1. Jabber Backend - an open source instant messaging protocol. Google is a company that actually embraces open source. The entire Jabber protocol is publicly available and well documented. 2. Jabber == Growth - although Google Talk doesn't implement much of the Jabber protocol right now, it has LOTs of room to grow. Features like multi-network communication, IRC-style chat, and offline instant messaging will keep Google Talk a much desired client. 3. Clean Interface - People who claim that Google Talk is "weak" simply do not get it. In fact, it shows just how ignorant they are. They fail to appreciate the simplistic beauty behind the whole thing. Simplicity has always been Google's main advantage and has set them apart from the competitors (compare Yahoo's homepage with Google's). Not every Google Talk user is a g33k. Why would the typical user want to tweak every aspect of the client? Keep it simple! Want more features? Use a more sophisticated client. Remember, Google Talk uses an open system of communication - any Jabber client will work. 4. No spyware 5. No annoying ads, stock tickers, flashy crap, blinking banners, or news tickers. 6. Very small executable - No bloat. No extra crap. Remember, this is just an instant messaging client. That's it! If you want a stock ticker, alerts, news, or whatever, use the corresponding tool. An instant messaging client was never supposed to have all of that crap built in. This is a huge advantage for dialup users and people who don't want or need any extra crap. 7. Integration with other Google products. Gmail integration is already there, but that's not the end of things. I imagine that as time passes, Google will integrate more products such as Google Maps in their product.

Warning: Spelling Troll Ahead

[Vryl]

How many times does the letter 'D' occur in 'advertisement'?. Only once, so...

Its 'ads' not 'adds'. One adds one number to another, perhaps whilst watching the ads on television.

It annoys me as much as the people who confuse loose and lose. It's sad to see how loose we are becoming with our grammar, we are losing the ability to spell correctly.

Oh well...

Why don't you all complain about AOL or Microsoft

[matchbo1]

I think that a lot of people who complain publicly and frequently that Google isn't as ideologically pure or keen on Free as in Libre software as say Richard Stallman everytime they come up with a great idea that changes face of the internet, kind of miss the point.

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.

Now lets think

[Mobus Dorphin]

Lets think here for a moment In about 2 hours and 15 minutes from the time I read this, GTalk will have been out 1 week. Now, lets think how long other messengers have been out. A long time. They have had time to constantly build to a point where they are freaking good messengers. I'm sure when MSN was out for only a week, it wasn't as good as GTalk is now. Also, you forget that even though its easy to get GTalk, it is still only BETA, thus, its not really fully featured yet. Give it time anbd updates and it will capture the full potential it can acheive.

MSNMessenger tied to Passport, not Hotmail

[stoborrobots]

... you can have an msn-messenger account to any email address...

No, you get to log onto MSN Messenger using any Passport account you want. Now, you have the choice when creating your Passport account:

• to use your personal email address as your login name, or
• to create a hotmail/msn email account and use that email address as your login name, or even
• to create an @passport.com login name which is not an email account,

but one way or another, you still need to create a Passport account.

Just because a login name is of the form user@host.domain, doesn't mean it's an email address.

Re:MSNMessenger tied to Passport, not Hotmail

[aztracker1]

I understand the technical aspect of this, but it's easier to use the same address as your email address for friends/family etc to get a hold of you... and for most it is...

Re:MSNMessenger tied to Passport, not Hotmail

[Luke-Jr]

So pick an email provider that also runs a parallel IM server... your ISP should be doing this, though it's not likely they are.

Re:MSNMessenger tied to Passport, not Hotmail

[silverkniveshotmail.]

I just want my ISP to provide the internet. If people really cared about crap like that AOL wouldn't be losing all of it's customers.

Money on IM?

[phorm]

You can't really make any money in a decentralized system

Who really makes much money on IM anyhow? None of the ones I've used have ever charged me. Yes, there's advertising on various IM services, but I have to wonder how that compares to maintaining servers capable of tracking millions of IM accounts on a live basis?

Re:Why don't you all complain about AOL or Microso

[GoRK]

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.

Re:iChat in Tiger does Jabber...are they compatibl

[Tibor the Hun]

No, older versions of iChat are not Jabber compatible. (Like iChat for Panther)
(The new iChat + Jabber only works on Tiger)

Re:jabber users?

[Luke-Jr]

I require anyone who wants to IM me use standards. Very rarely am I online the non-standards-compliant IM services.