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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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?

[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.

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

[maw]

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

"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).

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

[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

[vikramrn]

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

(and the variations without the 'nose')

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.

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.

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: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

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]

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?

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.

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

[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.)

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!!!!

[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.

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: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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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: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: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.

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.

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

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: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: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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

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?

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.

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.