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Russian Google Competitor Embraces Open Source Messaging

Posted by timothy on from the bilingual-pun-says-wikipedia dept.

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."

6 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm by willyhill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looking at that disaster of a front page, I'd say these guys are competing with Yahoo, not Google.

    --
    The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
    1. Re:Hmmm by Jerf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Cultures vary surprisingly widely on what constitutes "good design". Many Asian cultures, for instance, all but require you to have a very busy page.

      In a way, I'm surprised at how some of it turns out. If you came up to me and asked me which of the "East" or "West" would prefer Google to Yahoo, I'd have picked East to prefer the Google aesthetic and West to prefer the Yahoo approach, but I would be wrong. (Very, very broadly speaking. I am aware I am generalizing, this is a Slashdot comment, not a sociology PhD thesis. Please don't cite "a counterexample" at me and think it proves anything.)

  2. Re:Missing info by Z80xxc! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    True. Also, Facebook claims that it will be implementing XMPP eventually. That would bring millions of users an open standard chat protocol. And hopefully make currently-buggy facebook chat actually work.

    One reason I like Gtalk over Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, etc. is that it can talk to others not using Gtalk as long as they have some sort of XMPP-compatible chat client and an XMPP account with someone somewhere.

  3. Re:Missing info by t0tAl_mElTd0wN · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've worked with XMPP, and despite having it's own organization devoted to developing the standard, it suffers from a lot of issues regarding actual standardization. Most of these issues are in the form of deprecated extensions. I think that will be the biggest hurdle for XMPP - yay standardization and open source and all that, but when old clients do things in a deprecated way and new clients do things the right way and don't bother with the deprecated features (because they're deprecated) then you start having some issues. Just look at all the extensions and tell me that this is a viable protocol for interoperability: http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/

    --
    Not So Random
  4. Re:Gchat by Phlegethon_River · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That is of course true, but that doesn't mean that Google's implementation is anywhere near as open as Yandex.

    Google: Open Protocol, Closed Client
    Yandex: Open Protocol, Open Client

    Looks like Yandex wins.

  5. Re:Missing info by aliquis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gtalk don't do video, it does audio, however there are only a very limited amount of clients which supports the audio part. For instance Pidgin and Adium don't*.

    I appologise if I missread/missunderstood if you where talking about running a server by oneself.

    * Sure it was nice to see atleast miranda there, but well, until most / enough clients support it it won't help much and voice isn't enough, most people use skype/teamspeak/ventrilo for voice only anyway

    But webcam/voip have always been of very low priority by the developers of pidgin/libpurple and therefor adium is lacking to (since it use their libs.)