Google Adds Chat To Gmail

Nathan Weinberg writes "Google has added a chat feature to Gmail. It brings Google Talk, minus voice calls, into your webmail client. Gmail now also logs your IMs, whether they originate in Gmail or Google Talk. In the commentary at InsideGoogle, I note that Google recommends you disable Firefox's AdBlock, which can block Google's ads, if you want Gmail Chat to function properly."

Comments

Logging

[Silas is back]

Just to mention, logging of chats is turned off by default. You have to turn it on manually.

I think this thing is a good idea (not the logging, the chat-inside-mailapp). I wonder if you get marked as "online" whenever you check your Mail on mail.google.com...

Re:Logging

[zephos]

IM logging is indeed a handy feature especially within the context of your example.

I think people's concern might be that if Google is logging your chats then any conversation you have [even confidential conversations] are stored and controlled by Google, forever.

In your business setting the logging is basically like having a stenographer in a meeting and you own and control the notes. I think you'd want that same control if using Google's technology. After all if you discuss something confidential you'd want it insure it remains that way.

Re:Logging

[quantum bit]

No, they definitely can. Jabber doesn't use direct connections for normal chat, and even with an encrypted connection to the server, the server still can read what you're sending.

The only way to be sure is to use end-to-end encryption, which is usually client-specific.

Use AdBlock Plus

[Lawrence Ho]

I have AdBlock installed, and can't load Gmail
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=30926&topic=1523

Re:whatever!

[sinucus]

"AdBlock often interferes with Gmail's chat features, causing Firefox to crash. Our engineers are working hard to fix the problem, but in the meantime, disable AdBlock for testing purposes, and clear your browser's cache. Then, log back in to GmailAdBlock often interferes with Gmail's chat features, causing Firefox to crash. Our engineers are working hard to fix the problem, but in the meantime, disable AdBlock for testing purposes, and clear your browser's cache. Then, log back in to Gmail"

Well, after I actually RTF, I found that quote. So it appears that the blurb of this article was just FUD and that Adblock is just a temporary glitch and the services will work just fine in the future! Now I can happily go back to google worshipping.

Re:Am I the only one?

[MadMoses]

RTFA.

1. You can choose whether gmail logs your chats when you first use the feature, and you can change this option in the settings menu at any time.

2. There is even a feature that let's you get "off the record" during a chat. So even if you're having logging enabled, you can go "off the record" during a chat, and what you type afterwards will neither be logged in your gmail account, nor in your chat partner's gmail account.

Sounds good to me.

Gmail display language

[Anonymous Coward]

I changed my Gmail display language from English (UK) to English (US) and got "Chats" in my sidebar. Odd.

Re:I foresee....

[endrue]

I know that I have said this before but if you want a web-based chat client you really ought to check out meebo. Quite impressive really...

Re:Am I the only one?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Surprise, IM networks are centralized (that is, all what you say goes through a central server, there're chances that IM networks have been grepping into conversations for ej: conversations about people trying to convince people to go to another IM network). In fact, even IRC is centralized. Do you want security? Use end-to-end encryption.

Notice that unifying email and IM DOES have a lot of sense. IM and email are the SAME THING (send text and ocasinally some files), except that IM is instantaneous and email isn't. But there's no reason why you couldn't add a jabber extension which allows you to receive emails, your jabber client would just move them to a MUA. Email is just a particular case of the idea behind IM.

MeeBo

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how many other people use IM on a webpage... but I have been for a while through Meebo. Check it out, you can do your GTalk on there as well as AIM Yahoo MSN etc.

Nice addition though, one less page to launch in Safari.

Calvin K.

Re:Logging where?

[AKAImBatman]

Logging on *my* computer is fine and useful. Logging on *their* server is not.

1. It's optional. Turn it on as you see fit.
2. You keep all your GMail on their servers. How does this differ?

Whitelist Google in Adblock Plus?

[guspasho]

I'm using Adblock Plus which has the whitelist feature.

1) Couldn't one just whitelist anything that comes from Google? I haven't been "rolled out" yet, I don't see any indication of Gtalk in my Gmail account, so I can't try this for myself.

2) Can someone who does try it let us know what we need to add to the whitelist to make it work? Thanks.

Re:The whole point of email is to avoid "instant"

[ClearlyPennsylvania]

See bottom of screen - "Standard with Chat" vs "Standard without Chat". You can disable it entirely. Or, you can just sign off on the chat window.

Re:whatever!

[gkhan1]

You don't have to disable adblock completely , you could just whitelist the page. Don't be such a fuddy-duddy :P

Re:Using GTalk to Connect to other networks?

[pyros]

There was talk that Google would allow open server-to-server XMPP chat, and they have. You can add users from non-Google jabber servers to you contact list (provided they have the right DNS records and their server allows s2s). Integration with AIM should be coming soon. But I haven't heard anything about Yahoo or MSN.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Kadin2048]

Of course, that mode is more a false sense of security than anything, since your buddy could be using some client other than the Google one, which would blithely ignore the instruction. (Unless this feature is part of the standard protocol, which would be news to me.)

So unless you're absolutely sure what the person on the other end is using, you really can't trust such a thing. I wouldn't be too surprised if there are corporate IM clients developed (perhaps they're here already) that have logging that cannot be defeated.

Works fine for me

[Kadin2048]

I have AdBlock (vers. 0.5.2.055) and Filterset.G installed on Firefox 1.0.7, and it seems to work fine for me. Unfortunately I don't know the version of Filterset.G that I'm using, but it's not more than a few months old.

I don't understand what exactly would break GMail -- AdBlock doesn't filter out Google's text ads (at least mine doesn't), and wouldn't do anything anyway unless Google was in the block list. So I'm not sure why they're recommending that people remove it, as opposed to warning people not to blacklist Google.

I'll be interested to hear what the reasoning behind this is.

Re:Works fine for me

[kevmo]

Many adBlock filters look for the phrase "ad" or "ads". GMail uses a version ID for some reason in many of their URLs. In recent versions, they have had "ad" be part of the hexadecimal version ID, probably to prevent people from using adBlock. However, I just added GMail to the whitelist.

Linky linky

[Kadin2048]

http://allforces.com/2005/05/06/ichat-to-msn-throu gh-jabber/

An article on how to set up iChat to interoperate with MSN and Yahoo Messenger, using a Jabber server as a gateway. Mac-centric, obviously, but it gives an overview of what you'd need to do. The MSN-Jabber translation is all done by the server -- there's nothing really interesting going on at the client end. I think the MSN stuff is handled by this piece of software.

At one point I found a site which listed Jabber servers and showed what protocol-gatways they had running, but I can't find that list anymore. The examples used on the link above are in the Czech Republic, kind of a long haul for a US-originated and -bound packet.

Re:Google policies

[cashman73]

I just got a notice in my Google Talk account just now with updates to Google's Privacy Policy. This page actually has their privacy policy, with the old text they removed today in RED STRIKEOUT and the new stuff they added in GREEN UNDERLINE.