Russian Google Competitor Embraces Open Source Messaging

rm writes "Internet search and mail provider Yandex, which many view to be Google's main competitor in Russia, has recently added an instant messaging capability to its mail notifier application Ya.Online. As it turns out, the IM service is based on the open XMPP protocol, with connectivity to all other public Jabber servers available from day one. MacOS X and GNU/Linux versions of the app were also released (complete with sources under the GPL) and are determined to be based on the Psi IM client. Yandex looks to be a firm believer in open-source, also running a mirror site for FOSS and actively promoting its branded version of Firefox. Here's hoping that its affair with XMPP will help eliminate ICQ's enormous foothold in Russia."

Comments

Re:Missing info

[Brian Gordon]

Well when we say "an XMPP account with someone somewhere" we mean an XMPP account with any federated XMPP server; any domain. Can you set up your own AIM server and add it to the network? Also, Jabber is extensible and has voice chat through Jingle, which is what gtalk uses.

Re:Missing info

[Bogtha]

Yeah because you can't talk with people using MSN, ICQ, so on so on as long as they have an MSN, ICQ-compatible client and an account for that ..

An account for that... on MSN. Accounts on those networks are tied to the operator of the network. XMPP is decentralised, like email, so ISPs can provide their own servers, or you can use your own server.

I'd like to try to convince people to use XMPP but as long as it don't support voice and webcam there is no reason to even try.

XMPP supports voice and video through the Jingle extension, which originally came from and is supported by GTalk, if I recall correctly.

Re:Hmmm

[sulfur]

Yandex has a light version of their website (even more minimalistic than Google), just like Yahoo. The reason why Yandex is still more popular than Google in Russia is because it handles language-specific morphological variations of words better.