Microsoft Axing Messenger On March 15th

An anonymous reader writes with news that Microsoft is killing Messenger in favor of Skype. From the article: "Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013. On that date, all users will be migrated to Skype, which Microsoft acquired back in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. This means Messenger will be shut down in just 66 days. It will only keep working afterwards in mainland China, mainly because Skype is operated there by a local provider called TOM." Relatedly, an anonymous reader asks: "I am looking to build a Skype replacement for me and some friends and was wondering which languages you would use server side to handle all of the encrypted data streaming? I am thinking to use SIP on a centralized server (as NAT can be a pain to get through). The clients will use end-to-end encryption. Thoughts?" There are some alternatives already, for variable definitions of working.

Comments

LOL alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

none of those "alternatives" are Skype though, which kinda defeats the point.
you have to admire the original skypes creator, 5+ years and still nobody has managed to crack the protocol

Re:LOL alternatives

[Alain Williams]

Makes me wonder how much hidden government involvement there was; complete with back doors only available to ''friendly'' nations.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Joce640k]

Does skype allow you to paste images/screenshots like MSN does?

Re:LOL alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, I think you knew the answer to that at one time, until last night when the aliens came down, anal probed you and made you forget.

Re:LOL alternatives

[inglorion_on_the_net]

you have to admire the original skypes creator, 5+ years and still nobody has managed to crack the protocol

This is actually why I vehemently resent Skype's creator. We used to have open protocols that enabled us to do voice over IP, video chat, and video conferencing. Then in came Skype with a proprietary protocol enabling a subset of these features, and they made billions converting the world from open standards to their vendor-lock in.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Joce640k]

you have to admire the original skypes creator, 5+ years and still nobody has managed to crack the protocol

Why? Unbreakable encryption algorithms are widely published.

What takes talent is messing up as badly as something like WEP and still managing to get it past a committee who's supposed to know about stuff like that. I admire the people who managed that, it's industrial strength WTF.

Re:LOL alternatives

[SuricouRaven]

They made billions because their protocol and software worked, almost every time, even for near-zero-skill users who wouldn't know what a port number is. Install software, get chatting. There are open protocols, but things like SIP take a bit of setting up.

Re:LOL alternatives

[GNious]

As best I can tell, it is only with this step, moving MSN users to Skype, that we're really screwed over - there are 3rd party MSN clients, opensauced and whatnut, that at least work somewhat.
With this move, it is Bloated Skype* or nothing.

*: I only have 2 gig of ram - I can feel my computer slow down when Skype is running, also in the latest version.

Re:LOL alternatives

[ozmanjusri]

aliens came down, anal probed you and made you forget.

(Un)fortunately this time the anal probing is just part of the regular Microsoft customer experience.

Microsoft is re-engineering these supernodes to make it easier for law enforcement to monitor calls by allowing the supernodes to not only make the introduction but to actually route the voice data of the calls as well. In this way, the actual voice data would pass through the monitored servers and the call is no longer secure. It is essentially a man-in-the-middle attack, and it is made all the easier because Microsoft -– who owns Skype and knows the keys used for the service’s encryption -– is helping.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132935-microsoft-tweaking-skype-to-facilitate-wiretapping

Re:LOL alternatives

[Runaway1956]

Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy? I think I'd rather submit to the aliens. The "user experience" would be out of this world!

Of course, that's just me - different strokes for different folks and all.

Re:LOL alternatives

[cos(0)]

they made billions converting the world from open standards to their vendor-lock in

Think about that a little more. Did anyone hold a gun to the world to force them to switch? No. Clearly the open standards failed the world somehow.

In my personal experience, Ekiga (an implementation of the open standards you speak of) simply doesn't work in a NAT environment. I've tried multiple versions with multiple people, and either the phone doesn't ring, or the person doesn't even appear online. Skype worked. I even ended up giving Skype money.

It's much more productive to figure out why millions can be made switching away from open standards than to hate those who solve the world's problems.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Mike Frett]

Don't forget about Microsoft's enabling of Skype for wiretapping. Don't forget that, too many times people forget who they're dealing with, It's Microsoft, don't expect Open and Private.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Kalriath]

You know, that very article itself also completely counters that point. Perhaps next time you try to invent a conspiracy theory, you should find a source that doesn't prove the exact opposite of your rumours?

Re:LOL alternatives

[Stiletto]

Their culture must really be a great fit with Microsoft's.

Skype Guy: "You know, there are already open protocols for doing all of this. But I'm just going to ignore the existing standards, create my own proprietary ones, and try to lock customers in!"

The result? Today the world of VOIP is set back years, a fragmented mess of incompatibility, with the leading vendor having a closed, proprietary solution.

Right out of Microsoft's playbook. It's almost as if Bill Gates himself was one of the Skype founders.

Re:LOL alternatives

[ozmanjusri]

You know, that very article itself also completely counters that point.

No, the article mentions that a spokesperson from Skype completely evades countering that point.

"Skype takes all necessary steps to prevent/defeat nefarious attempts to subvert the Skype experience. Skype takes its users’ safety and security seriously and we work tirelessly to ensure each individual has the best possible experience."

Perhaps you should read prepared statements more carefully and be a little less credulous.

Re:LOL alternatives

[DarwinSurvivor]

And you're assuming MSN didn't have that to start with?

Re:LOL alternatives

[DarwinSurvivor]

Except that with Skype you have the key and it STILL hasn't been broken properly.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Kalriath]

Proving my point again. You quoted Skype's response to claims their source code was leaked, and not their response to claims that calls are being routed through the supernodes, which was responded to thusly:

As part of our ongoing commitment to continually improve the Skype user experience, we developed supernodes which can be located on dedicated servers within secure datacenters. This has not changed the underlying nature of Skype’s peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find one another (calls do not pass through supernodes). We believe this approach has immediate performance, scalability and availability benefits for the hundreds of millions of users that make up the Skype community.

(Emphasis mine). Which is very specific, non-evasive, and the exact opposite of your claims. No surprises there.

Re:LOL alternatives

[CronoCloud]

This!

Skype Just Works. Sure it's not open source and it's not an open protocol...but it works without fiddling even on Linux, which is why it became so popular. Fairly good sound quality too.

As much as I'd rather everyone use Gtalk, they don't, they use Skype.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that Microsoft does all that except for the critical part that made Skype successful - the "and it works pretty much everywhere with no effort" part.

Re:LOL alternatives

[inglorion_on_the_net]

Think about that a little more. Did anyone hold a gun to the world to force them to switch? No. Clearly the open standards failed the world somehow.

Of course. I didn't claim anybody forced people to use Skype. Skype won because they made a product that people liked and marketed it successfully. A lot of people didn't know that you could "call people for free" using your computer, until they were told about Skype.

However, none of that invalidates the point that Skype creates vendor-lock in by means of their proprietary protocol. I don't admire people who do that, particularly when they do it in an area where open protocols already exist.

Re:LOL alternatives

[cos(0)]

However, none of that invalidates the point that Skype creates vendor-lock in by means of their proprietary protocol. I don't admire people who do that, particularly when they do it in an area where open protocols already exist.

You're still not thinking. Open protocols still exist; Skype didn't erase them or ban them. They just don't work. Again—it doesn't matter if open protocols exist if the normal person in normal circumstances cannot get a simple phone call to work.

If you resent vendor lock-in so much, why don't you simply make the existing open protocols work? Or create your own open protocol that works?

Re:LOL alternatives

[BitZtream]

And the same is true with many other communications protocols.

Skype isn't impressive.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Beefchief]

Yes.

Re:LOL alternatives

[ozmanjusri]

This has not changed the underlying nature of Skype’s peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find one another (calls do not pass through supernodes)

Disingenuous. "They DO not pass through supernodes" is not the same as "They CAN not pass through supernodes."

Microsoft had at that time already obtained a patent describing recording agents that can be placed in a multitude of devices, including routers. There is also the note of a recording agent software that represents “a software module that logically and/or physically sits between the call server and the network.” According to Microsoft, the agent will have access “to each communication sent to and from the call server,” which clearly refers to the general infrastructure of a VoIP service and network.

“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a Microsoft patent application that reaches back to December 2009 and describes ‘recording agents’ to legally intercept VoIP phone calls. The ‘Legal Intercept‘ patent application is one of Microsoft’s more elaborate and detailed patent papers, which is comprehensive enough to make you think twice about the use of VoIP audio and video communications. The document provides Microsoft’s idea about the nature, positioning and feature set of recording agents that silently record the communication between two or more parties.”

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20110153809.PGNR.&OS=DN/20110153809RS=DN/20110153809

The only conclusion you can make is that:

While we don't know the full details of how Skype handles its key exchange, what is clear is that Skype is in a position to impersonate its customers, or, should it be forced, to give a government agency the ability to impersonate its customers. As Skype acts as the gatekeeper of conversations, and the only entity providing any authentication of callers, users have no way of knowing if they're directly communicating with a friend they frequently chat with, or if their connection is being intercepted using a man in the middle attack, made possible due to the disclosure of cryptographic keys by Skype to the government.

http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2012/07/the-known-unknows-of-skype-interception.html?m=1

Re:LOL alternatives

[inglorion_on_the_net]

I feel we're talking past each other. I'm saying I don't admire the creation of a proprietary protocol for Internet telephony.

You're saying that I could create an open solution that works. You're right. I could. But that doesn't mean I admire the person or company that switched us away from open solutions to their proprietary one.

What I would have admired is someone improving and/or promoting the open solutions so that we would now have interoperable voice over IP similar to how we have interoperable phones, IP stacks, and email. And, like me, Skype's creators could have done that, but chose not to.

Re:LOL alternatives

[gomiam]

Really? I kind of remember its being decrypted long ago (something about using the first bytes in the stream as RC4 seed) and the researchers even managed to get to be a supernode and mess around with clients.

Re:LOL alternatives

[nobodie]

in the case of China, the P2P is disabled and it only runs through the government filtered "Tom" servers (supernodes). A year or so ago I think it was McGill researchers (somebody in a uni in Canada anyway,) got into the server and found ALL the messages from some number of years stored in plain text.

Re:LOL alternatives

[Kalriath]

Disingenuous. "They DO not pass through supernodes" is not the same as "They CAN not pass through supernodes."

Microsoft had at that time already obtained a patent describing recording agents that can be placed in a multitude of devices, including routers. There is also the note of a recording agent software that represents “a software module that logically and/or physically sits between the call server and the network.” According to Microsoft, the agent will have access “to each communication sent to and from the call server,” which clearly refers to the general infrastructure of a VoIP service and network.

Disingenuous. "They DO NOT pass through supernodes" clearly says that calls do not pass through supernodes, whether they can or not. Furthermore, the patent on recording agents is completely irrelevant - it's clearly something useful for.. oh, I don't know... Unified Communications Systems like Lync.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20110153809.PGNR.&OS=DN/20110153809RS=DN/20110153809

The only conclusion you can make is that:

While we don't know the full details of how Skype handles its key exchange, what is clear is that Skype is in a position to impersonate its customers, or, should it be forced, to give a government agency the ability to impersonate its customers. As Skype acts as the gatekeeper of conversations, and the only entity providing any authentication of callers, users have no way of knowing if they're directly communicating with a friend they frequently chat with, or if their connection is being intercepted using a man in the middle attack, made possible due to the disclosure of cryptographic keys by Skype to the government.

http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2012/07/the-known-unknows-of-skype-interception.html?m=1

Actually, no, that's not the only conclusion you can make. It's the only conclusion that you are willing to make, because you're a tinfoil hat nutter.

careful

[Anonymous Coward]

IF you have an existing skype account you get 1 shot at merging your 'hotmail/messneger/live' account. If you do not do it right you end up with 2 accounts. You can untangle it but it is a pain and includes emailing skype admins. Even now I am not sure I can undo it...

Re:careful

[Anonymous Coward]

ah... no... once you merge it you have to contact them to unmerge it. What you DO get if you merge it, is your skype account with your msn contacts added in (usually after logging in twice) or the little new option to log in from a microsoft account, which only displays your msn contacts, not the skype ones.

I've done this already, you end up with 2 accounts either way, but you only need to use the skype one, if your msn contacts haven't shown up, update skype to the latest build, and log in again, it took two logins for them to show up in my list.

I hate it, I can't appear offline to specific contacts? WTH

Re:careful

[Anonymous Coward]

When I merged mine I found that the skype account remained the same and I had to log in with my microsoft account to have both sets of contacts. (but once I worked this out it did work)

Re:careful

[Anonymous Coward]

You can now easily unmerge accounts through the My Account section at Skype.com.

Re:careful

[infinitelink]

Why would you want to integrate further into Microsoft crap? I mean, I get it for the likes of XBox etc., but if you're one of those using Windows only because Ubuntu screwed the pooch, you need some de facto industry software of one sort or another, things like that, keeping your identities and services separate rather than getting tied-in is the better idea: these massive companies oftn seem to be run by "nice" sociopaths, so giving them a nice, integrated window into your life is not a good idea.

Mumble?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used mumble before, don't know about the encryption. One should be able to maybe pipe the data through an ssh connection?

Re:Mumble?

[gunnaraztek]

Mumble has very good encryption, if the host uses proper keys. Mumble can use the same encryption keys as websites do.

fickle

[AntEater]

This is why I tend to go ballistic when someone argues that we should stick with the larger vendor because they provide product stability. I've been told we can't count on the smaller guys to stay in the market and be able to provide support over the long term. Then I look at it and see the the "big guys" kill products right and left depending on their whim and the perceived profitability of a given market. Messenger is a stupid little product but I'm sure there are more than a few people out of that 100M+ base who have some dependence on it and don't want or need to use Skype.

Re:fickle

[Frankie70]

This is why I tend to go ballistic when someone argues that we should stick with the larger vendor because they provide product stability.

Do people argue this with you for paid products or free products like Messenger?

Re:fickle

[AntEater]

Both. I find that people tend to argue with me over just about anything. I often find it puzzling that so many people want to disagree with someone so reasonable.

Re:fickle

[ledow]

I started with a Hotmail account pre-2000, probably pre-1995 (don't know exactly, but long before I was in uni). Since then it has been an MSN account (where I started using Messenger), a Live account, a Microsoft account, and now it's taking over my Skype. Hell, even Windows 8 wanted me to log in using it and I refused - I haven't actually USED that account in YEARS.

The problem I'm more worried about (rather than the bi-annual "upgrade your account to new account X" problem) is what about third-party clients? I have Pidgin plugged in with my messenger details, and presume that will stop. Honestly, that just means I'll stop using messenger and won't even notice - I still have plenty of alternatives and slowly ditched things in the past as they stopped letting me use them from third-party clients (I still have ICQ, AOL, MSN, YIM, Jabber, and even Facebook messengers plugged into my Pidgin).

Fact is, I don't really care about running "your" software, just your backend service - and it's just not vital enough that I'd care. MS, in particular, has had a bad history with me and their client software - it's been pretty atrocious at points over the years and taking several backward steps (I can't remember the last time I successfully did a messenger file transfer, the various takeovers meant it got more and more plastered with adverts, etc. and video-over-MSN was always a joke in comparison).

Steam also wants me to message my friends that way - er, no - because it's just a sub-standard chat client that I have a bucket of and numerous alternatives with more features that don't need me and my friends to be running Steam all the time to use them. Like Skype, I won't have it running "just in case" someone wants to talk to me, and hence they won't use it as much either (if Skype offered a proper API that other programs could use, Pidgin etc. would jump on it).

Skype is probably MS's biggest online asset at the moment. It's really quite a powerful tool and I was half expecting it to go the other way (e.g. Skype functionality appearing only in Messenger and Windows, etc.). I now honestly give it a handful of months before I abandon it except to keep the account live. And that really means that Skype will surge as everyone does this "upgrade" and then die when people learn how atrocious the client is again.

Granted, I'm a freeloader - I've never paid Skype a penny or any of the MSN/Live/Microsoft etc. services. But the fact is that I haven't run an "official" client in nearly a decade now, and the bit that messenger does can be done on any number of third-party clients. Messing with that just means I move on to something else - hell, I even have my own domain's Jabber setup ready to roll if it comes to it. It's even loaded into my Pidgin and anyone can use it for free.

I don't see what they seek to achieve, to be honest. I won't suddenly start using MS services that I haven't used in a decade (the IM client kept the account open nicely, though). I won't suddenly start using MS features through Skype. And I won't tolerate Skype being broken by MS upgrades without just moving on or sacrificing its functionality entirely. And they won't "save" anything by merging accounts because they still can't shut down in China, they still have to track all those accounts, they still have to pay for separate authentication mechanisms in the various software for years to come, etc.

Kill messenger. Not much will happen, but - as pointed out - people will be a bit more wary about what they sign up for in the future. Like the Google accounts lately that have had features taken from them, etc. - we'll just move on as soon as something affects us personally.

It would be sad to see my ancient Hotmail/MSN account go, if for no other reason that I'm impressed it's still running (I never check it and only get spam and the last "proper" email in it was from 2005, I think, before I moved them all out when they started to cut out Outlook Express integration with it - which was the only free way

Re:fickle

[smooth wombat]

I have a comic from Randy Glasbergen I printed out and stuck on my cube wall which reads:

Nine out of 10 people disagree with my idea, which sends a very clear message -- nine out of 10 people are idiots!

The sad part is that sentiment is very similar to my normal day.

Re:fickle

[Darth Snowshoe]

THIS. You know, if startups actually cared about their customers, they wouldn't sell out so readily (at least, to That Company) or, when doing so, would extract some agreement to not kill the service outright for X years after. I won't mourn MS killing the messenger, but the larger trend is just depressing.

(Filming this with my Flip camera.)

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

You admit you are a freeloader. How is Skype supposed to pay for their back end services that you say you want to use if you are just going to use something like Pidgin to make sure there are no advertisements? If you were paying for the service your arguments would make more sense - but hey, those servers, the bandwidth, the coders, the support staff - they all need to eat.

Re:fickle

[inglorion_on_the_net]

This is why I tend to go ballistic when someone argues that we should stick with the larger vendor because they provide product stability. I've been told we can't count on the smaller guys to stay in the market and be able to provide support over the long term.

I honestly don't know if the big fish or the smaller guys have a better track record in keeping their services around. What I do know is that if you really care about that, there is no viable alternative to open standards implemented by multiple vendors. For chat, for example, IRC is still around. It has been since 1988.

What's interesting here is that MSN Messenger actually had one of the more open of the proprietary protocols. I believe Microsoft actually documented it. Of course, they still tried to lock out third-party clients.

Skype, I think, actually uses XMPP for text messages, which is an open standard gaining more and more traction. It's also used by Facebook and Google for text messages, for example. So, again, open standards win the day and outlive proprietary protocols.

Re:fickle

[Lokitoth]

You realize that Skype has transitioned to using Messenger for the backend, right? Once you link the accounts Skype is also the client for your messenger account. The only thing they are killing off is the Messenger client, which makes complete sense - there is no reason to continue supporting both. The difference for China is organizational, and would require a restructuring, plus there are probably also various legal hurdles to cross.

Re:fickle

[KingMotley]

if Skype offered a proper API that other programs could use, Pidgin etc. would jump on it

Here ya go: http://developer.skype.com/desktop-api-reference

Plenty of 3rd parties don't have any issues using the API. You can find phones, voicemail software, video camera plugins that all work with skype. Of course, with skype you have access to chat with anyone that has a skype, messenger, or facebook chat account.

It won't be long before an advert-filled, forced-upgrade version of Skype that consumes more resources than my web browser (and has an integrate IE component or whatever) is the only way to use it.

Because that's exactly what happened to Messenger. Oh, wait, no it didn't.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

What Bandwidth? Skype is a Distributed Network similar to Bit torrent. The only bandwidth they pay for is that of the website itself and since MS bought them out, they don't even pay for that anymore. MS has so much shared bandwidth that they're in the same class as one of the Backbones of the Web that they basically get it for free through their peering agreements.

I myself an happy to see Messenger die as I haven't used it in a decade and Skype! I haven't bothered with it since the 5.0 interface came out. Personal preferrence is for Google Voice/Video as it works fine with my hardware and I get to keep a chat log. Even ICQ lost me long ago when they changed the damn interface. About the only thing I might use now is Pidgin or one of the other cross platform tools that allows secure connections (encryption) and includes an OTR (off the record) plug-in.

Re:fickle

[hawguy]

THIS. You know, if startups actually cared about their customers, they wouldn't sell out so readily (at least, to That Company) or, when doing so, would extract some agreement to not kill the service outright for X years after. I won't mourn MS killing the messenger, but the larger trend is just depressing.

(Filming this with my Flip camera.)

People that start startups want to get paid for all of the time they've put into it - and sometimes they get paid quite handsomely. As much as I dislike Microsoft, if they wanted to acquire the startup that I work for, I wouldn't turn down their millions of dollars.

If you want to start a more altruistic startup and tell your employees that there's not going to be a big payout because you'll only accept offers from ethical companies (are there any?) who agree to restrictions on how they can use the company they've bought, feel free to do so.

Re:fickle

[chihowa]

I even have my own domain's Jabber setup ready to roll if it comes to it.

If you have your own domain and a Jabber server on it, you can easily allow server-to-server communication. Mine is federated with Google's (and others), so I can use my local account to keep in touch with people using Google's chat services without having to keep a Google account active.

Re:fickle

[serviscope_minor]

I find that people tend to argue with me over just about anything.

No they don't.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they do.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

Messaging is not some special technology that requires much bandwidth or infrastructure. It's no different form email and google is able to give it to us for free.

We could all ditch these IM services as soon as we move on to IPv6. P2P connections. Of course there is the problem of spam since there is no central server doing the work, but try finding a needle in a haystack.

Re:fickle

[wonkey_monkey]

Wabbit season!

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

But there is a reason. There are tons of things you can only do on messenger that you cannot do on skype. For example, simple two player games, automatic remote assistance, document collaboration, and handwriting transfer. And those are the ones I came up with off hand.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

They took out handwriting a long time ago, much to my annoyance.

And yes, Skype is woefully under-featured compared to Messenger, and isn't as slick, especially when sharing files.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume the GP is already well-aware of the Pidgin support for Skype via running Skype and using a plugin that provides iffy UI integrating using the API you linked to. It is in no way a first-class experience. The Skype protocol is kept secret and due to the encryption layer difficult to reverse engineer. (Don't worry, the encryption, like most VOIP encryption, is done wrong so it does nothing to actually protect the content of your voice calls.) This is different from every other IM/VOIP protocol which all have open source implementations so they can be used however the user wants.

Re:fickle

[amorsen]

Skype is a Distributed Network similar to Bit torrent.

Not anymore it isn't. Microsoft runs all the ultraservers now.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

Duck season!

Re:fickle

[clarkn0va]

What, because large companies aren't fickle about paid products too?

Re:fickle

[Ravaldy]

Wow. You care so little you wasted 15 minutes writting a novel about it. Thank god I stopped reading after the 1st paragraph. I would have built a very negative attitude towards the world and how bad it is.

Re:fickle

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Don't worry, the encryption, like most VOIP encryption, is done wrong so it does nothing to actually protect the content of your voice calls.

Yes, and there's no need to see a single line of code of it to know that. The simple fact that there's no system to actually authenticate what could look like a fingerprint is enough clue to understand that there's no authentication of your peers, like you'd have with let's say OTR. But guess what? The lemmings don't know about it... The lemmings don't even know the difference between authentication and encryption.

Re:fickle

[QuantumRiff]

Forget vendors, and go with Protocols. XMPP is supported by how many products and vedors? And if you get tired of google chat, or facebook chat, you can roll your own with a dozen free servers (or find a hosted service.)

Kind of like choosing to use SIP as the basis of your phone system, then deciding on vendors. Keeps you away from many of the whims of the provider of the proprietary one.

Re:fickle

[Rukia]

if it matters, there are pidgin plugins for both skype and steam

skype
http://eion.robbmob.com/

steam chat
http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-opensteamworks/

Re:fickle

[Runaway1956]

c m birds?

m r not birds

oh s m are birds

no, m r ducks

o, I c, m r so ducks!

(plagiarized from the Texas High School graduate literacy test)

http://www.txkisd.net/campuses/ths.asp

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

Baseball season!

Re:fickle

[MysteriousPreacher]

This is why I tend to go ballistic when someone argues that we should stick with the larger vendor because they provide product stability. I've been told we can't count on the smaller guys to stay in the market and be able to provide support over the long term.

Folding the functionality of a product in to another (after 13 years of service) is hardly short-term or being done on a whim. That's pretty good stability by just about any standard.

Re:fickle

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"Ok send out a message to all 100 million with the Skype migration link."

"Ok, but that will take awhile. Since Messenger is disappearing, how about just to people who logged in in the past year?"

"How many is that?"

"3."

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the "pleasure" to use the skype sdk, you can't pay me enough to do it again.

Re:fickle

[Kalriath]

Supernodes don't route calls. Think of them as being directory assistance.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just contradiction.

Re:fickle

[amorsen]

Something routes the calls that are behind sufficiently vicious firewalls at both ends. If not the supernodes, then what?

Re:fickle

[Kalriath]

If both ends are sufficiently vicious, my understanding is that the call will likely fail. I have seen Skype fail before. (Remember, it is just Kazaa after all).

Regardless, Skype still insists that the calls are end-to-end encrypted, which would mean the traffic would just be an amorphous TLS blob anyway.

Re:fickle

[markdueck]

at least I agree with you on one thing!

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has added a bunch of supernodes to improve service quality but there's still a whole bunch more on the public P2P network. Biggest problem with P2P though is that it doesn't really work in a mobile world.

Re:fickle

[tehcyder]

Messaging is not some special technology that requires much bandwidth or infrastructure. It's no different form email and google is able to give it to us for free.

Nothing you get from Google is free. Just because you don't get billed by them each month doesn't mean they're a charity. They're just a geek-friendly version of Facebook.

TANSTAAFL.

Re:fickle

[tehcyder]

As much as I dislike Microsoft, if they wanted to acquire the startup that I work for, I wouldn't turn down their millions of dollars.

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?

Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose I would.

Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?

Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!

Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are just haggling about the price.

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

m r ducks
m r not ducks
o s a r. c m wangs?
l i b. m r ducks!

Re:fickle

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't see what they seek to achieve, to be honest."

Same thing as Microsoft had changed Hotmail into Outlook.com, revamped Skydrive and Bing etc.

Polishing a turd, rebranding it and hoping someone takes a nibble of it.

Messenger version 2009 (from Microsoft Live Essentials) was the last great version. Every version after that sucked, as 'features' of social media integration crept in and useful features (handwriting) were removed.

Good luck getting all Messenger users to transition to Skype (which became crap after Microsoft's acquisition... what a surprise). Most of us have already moved on to alternatives. Been nice knowing ya.

Re:fickle

[Brulath]

Messenger coop jigsaws (Jigsaw Too) using your own pictures (or ones you acquired elsewhere) were quite a lot of fun, but such features wouldn't be good for a business client and probably don't fit in well with Microsoft's other platforms (I assume an xbox of some description will get it in the future).

Re:fickle

[Lokitoth]

I believe Skype has a plugin model for all those things - though granted, I have no idea how good the ecosystem around that actually is. The others are a good point, though I wonder what percentage of users of Messenger actually use those.

Re:fickle

[Pi Is A Rational]

AOL and ICQ accounts have still been going for about the same length as Messenger has been around. Hell, my account from 1997 still works!

Jabber/XMPP

[Albanach]

I am looking to build a Skype replacement for me and some friends and was wondering which languages you would use server side to handle all of the encrypted data streaming? I am thinking to use SIP on a centralized server (as NAT can be a pain to get through). The clients will use end-to-end encryption. Thoughts?

Was this not what Jabber/XMPP was supposed to achieve over a decade ago?

I'd start by looking there. A centralized server is also a single point of failure. Something that tends to be frowned upon by users looking to chat by voice/video/text.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[cockroach2]

Very much so. Plus you can talk to anyone who has a Jabber/XMPP account, including everybody on Google Talk.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[TheRaven64]

Almost everyone on Google Talk. If you use Google Talk and don't set up SRV records pointing to Google's server for XMPP, other Google Talk users can talk to you, but other XMPP users can't.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[Kjella]

I'd start by looking there. A centralized server is also a single point of failure. Something that tends to be frowned upon by users looking to chat by voice/video/text.

Facebook.com also looks like a centralized server from the user's perspective, and yet that's my impression where most my Messenger contacts left for. If you just have a sufficient number of load balancers and whatever else redundancy the user doesn't see I doubt they see the problem. I mean we started out distributed with IRC and the trend went the other way.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[cockroach2]

Ah, good point.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[chihowa]

Almost everyone on Google Talk. If you use Google Talk and don't set up SRV records pointing to Google's server for XMPP, other Google Talk users can talk to you, but other XMPP users can't.

I don't understand. Can you elaborate on this?

  Why would you set up SRV records pointing at Google's server instead of running your own server and using s2s to talk to Google's server? The latter configuration seems to be how XMPP was designed to work and will allow federation with any other server.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[Albanach]

Sorry, I wasn't clear in the point I was making and you misinterpret me as a result.

Many things will have single points of failure (though that could be a server farm, or a cloud provider like Amazon). My point was that if you want to provide a service that is expected to be reliable and available 24x7 by users, you need to be prepared for that and mitigate to the fullest extent possible.

It sounded like the OP wants to set up a single instance serving perhaps SIP or XMPP. I'd just want them to be aware that that is going to need maintenance and could have other forced downtime, and folk don't like that, especially with anything that's supposed to be instant. They should at the very least be considering failover options at the outset, rather than when it's actually needed.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[Fallingcow]

I'm a fan of Openfire. Nice admin interface, easy to install, easy to hack (it's just Java, and it's a relatively sane specimen from that ecosystem).

It's my impression that ejabberd is considered the best XMPP server, but it's written in Erlang so your C-family skills won't get you far in hacking it, it's less friendly to administrate (unless your config is extremely boring), and, as with so many Erlang projects, the documentation is mediocre and assumes you know Erlang—especially Mnesia, which Erlang developers seem to love more than anything else in the entire world, to the point that they can't help directly exposing mere sysadmins to its greatness.

Both appear to support voice chat, though I've never tried to use it.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[QuantumRiff]

I believe that is for using the google apps for your domain features.

We have an XMPP server and point the client and server DNS records for our domain to our server, and anyone can quickly add us and start chatting.. (well, okay, we block the client port at the firewall, but the server to server works well)

$ dig SRV _xmpp-client._tcp.example.net
$ dig SRV _xmpp-server._tcp.example.net

Ensure those point to your XMPP server for example.net

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[shutdown -p now]

The problem with XMPP is that, while a lot of companies took it up for their IM networks (most notably, Facebook), many of them are not keen on enabling cross-server connectivity. The only major player I know of that does that is Google. It's still better than other options, since you can use the client of your choice, but you still get "network lock-in".

Oh, and the other thing... even Google could do better. Sure, they use XMPP, but they also have some unique features of their own - like server-side chat logs - for which they neither use any of the established standards, nor publish the protocol. So you can use third-party XMPP clients with GTalk, but they can't fetch those logs - only the official client can.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[TheRaven64]

For the same reason that you'd set up an MX record pointing to Google's mail server, instead of running your own: that you're either lazy, stupid, or very trusting. The difference is, if you don't set up the MX record pointing to Google, but tell them that you want to run Google Apps for your domain, then no one can send email to you. If you don't set up the SRV records, you can still log in to GTalk with your domain name and use it, and other GTalk users can still message you, but no one on a non-Google XMPP server can.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[turbidostato]

"if you don't set up the MX record pointing to Google, but tell them that you want to run Google Apps for your domain, then no one can send email to you."

Wrong, sir, you are wrong.

I know because I've done it. It's neither difficult nor undocumented.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't set up SRV records, but Google Talk and Facebook users can chat with me just fine. I'm not even sure what setting up a SRV record in my DNS that points to a server that isn't mine would accomplish.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[tehcyder]

Almost everyone on Google Talk. If you use Google Talk and don't set up SRV records pointing to Google's server for XMPP, other Google Talk users can talk to you, but other XMPP users can't.

I have absolutely no idea what you just said. Is it anything to do with telephones?

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[wertigon]

If it's for your own personal use, I reccommend Prosody. Small, simple, stable and with the features you want.

If it's for a larger org like a medium-large company, then Erlang or Openfire is the better way to go though.

Re:Jabber/XMPP

[wertigon]

That should read, "ejabberd or Openfire". Gah, stupid typoes! :P

hotmail

[Revek]

I will have no use for hotmail at all.

Re:hotmail

[YodasEvilTwin]

You have never needed an MS email account to use Messenger (or at least not for over a decade). Their Passport service (now Live ID IIRC) let you register any address; I've used my GMail for something like 7 years.

Re:hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like it's a bad thing ....

Re:hotmail

[David_Hart]

I will have no use for hotmail at all.

I have one use for Hotmail, to test sending and receiving email. Test messages sent from my Hotmail account are delivered really quickly. I used to use it all the time when I was an Email Admin. Now, as a Network engineer, I don't use it as much.l

Re:hotmail

[RaceProUK]

now Live ID IIRC

Microsoft Account now, though it was only changed in August.

Another score for Valve

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to bother with skype, I'll just kick the habit of using msn and start to use the "social" aspects of steam instead as it's already installed..

Skype Alternatives

[Sedated2000]

Google Talk and Google Hangout are good obvious alternatives. If you insist on running your own solution, I've had very good experiences with using Elastix. It has everything built in to one package that takes advantage of Asterisk VOIP. I've set it up for multiple companies as their corporate phone system, including some that used it in fairly large call centers. It's also free and has a decent community behind it. They're pretty helpful, and when I was starting out with it I got a lot of good advice on their IRC channel. VOIP, IM, Videoconferencing, and it has good hardware support for all of the telephony devices.

Re:Skype Alternatives

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Second this. I've been really impressed with Google Talk/Hangout, especially how it integrates with the other web services..

Re:Skype Alternatives

[gmack]

The nice thing about Google Talk is that it is XMPP based so it will interface with anyone running a Jabber server so in my case the address is username@myserver so it is more like email works which is how IM should have been designed from the start. The fewer single vendor solutions we have on the internet, the better off we all are.

Re:Skype Alternatives

[kerashi]

The big problem I have with Google Talk is the lack of a simple image sharing function. In WLM it's really easy, and appears in-line and in a picture sharing window off to the side of your contact's IM window. You can view the images together so you know you're looking at the same thing.

This is particularly useful for sharing and discussing interesting pornography. Something that I do quite often.

I have yet to find a solution that is the equal of WLM for this function.

Re:Skype Alternatives

[shutdown -p now]

The nice thing about Google Talk is that it is XMPP based so it will interface with anyone running a Jabber server

It's true in case of GTalk, but don't make the mistake of thinking that any XMPP-based service will do the same. Whether they allow their server to talk to other servers is up to them, and e.g. Facebook, while using XMPP for their chat, don't enable communication to other servers.

Re:Skype Alternatives

[gmack]

True enough but I do enjoy being asked for my gtalk username only to get the "no, that's your email address, I want your gtalk" response only to talk them into trying it and having it work.

How does this affect Lync?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many corporates use Lync - will that go away as well?

Re:How does this affect Lync?

[Tridus]

Lync uses a corporate server for it's traffic, so it should be fine. In fact they just significantly raised the price on it!

Re:How does this affect Lync?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lync is an online conference system and a competitor to WebEx and GoToMeeting.

It does have a conference chat utility, but it's not Messenger or Skype.

Jingle

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the XMPP Jingle extension supported by Asterisk and Freeswitch amongst many others

Re:Jingle

[FireFury03]

Use the XMPP Jingle extension supported by Asterisk and Freeswitch amongst many others

How well do Asterisk and an IM server integrate together for that? i.e. If I run Asterisk for SIP telephony (calls to sip:foo@example.com go there) and ejabberd for XMPP IM (IMs to xmpp:foo@example.com go there), can I sensibly make instant messages for xmpp:foo@example.com still go to ejabberd and phone calls for xmpp:foo@example.com go to Asterisk (and therefore integrate with the existing phone system)?

the end of an era

[hjf]

While this is mostly irrelevant for north american users, MSN messenger, later Windows Live Messenger, was a big part of spanish-speaking internet users lives. Oh, the memories of using it to pick up girls ;) back then when you could add anyone and they wouldn't freak out because "they don't know you", like people do in facebook. Late night chats with groups of people, those annnoying emoticons, pink fonts, useless "winks"... it's all in the past now. Oh yes, and girls showing their boobs on cam as well. Friendships, fights, contact blocks...

To be fair, Facebook chat killed Messenger. It's convenient, simple to use and it works well in small screens like netbook machines.

Microsoft screwed up in their last incarnation of messenger. Demanding real names instead of a nickname, moving the legendary hotmail to "outlook", and making that huge resource hog that messenger 2011 was, with integration to "social" bullshit. So heavy that people couldn't even use their machines if messenger was running.

To date there's no match for messenger's "share photos", which let you drag and drop pictures to the chat window and have them automatically resized and compressed to something more decent, and shown "big" in the chat window. With the option, of course, to download full size and keep (I think yahoo messenger has that but it's irrelevant in spanish-speaking land). This isn't an option on facebook and not even drag-and-drop to send a photo works there (MSN was great: Print-Screen, Ctrl-V to instantly send a screen capture).

I did support for small ISPs over the past decade and it was THE biggest problem if messenger didn't work. People didn't mind that their web browsing didn't work as long as messenger worked.

Skype is in no way a replacement for MSN. Skype was designed to make calls, and that's what it insists in doing. Skype chat is horrible. It doesn't seem to actually "close" if you close it (you have to log out, and then it won't automatically log back in in next boot). And no photo share for skype.

I, for one, will be missing "MSN" as people called it here. Most people won't since they have moved to FB chat long ago.

Re:the end of an era

[gtirloni]

Microsoft screwed up

Finally. I couldn't hold my breath any longer.

Re:the end of an era

[jader3rd]

Demanding real names instead of a nickname,

Best feature ever. I hated how I would have trouble finding certain contacts because I didn't know what cute nickname they picked for themselves that day.

Re:the end of an era

[V!NCENT]

I thought everybody converted to Whatsapp, ages ago.

But this does truly starts to axe into Microsoft's dominance. I remember the times where using MSN for chatting on Linux, was such a pain in the ass, everytime they changed the fscking protocol.

Even the MSOffice XML doctypes are losing ground.

I hope this doesn't mean that after the IBM and later Microsoft dominance, Apple will be the next big headache in computing, but that might turn out to be HTMLv5 (hopefully!).

Re:the end of an era

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just Big Companies blundering about. Axing Products left and right, without thinking about the Consequences.

Did nobody think about making a Hybrid Skype/MSN-Client?

Or even changing the MSN-Network Protocol to use the Skype-Network underneath?

Quietly Slowly merging the Two-Application incorperating the Best of Both Worlds?

No.

There was a time when Microsoft cared about Useability (for Normal and Power Users).

Re:the end of an era

[Stormwatch]

Hey, it could be even worse. Some people would do shit like this: ~\/\/\~~###*[*[*[*MARY*]*]*]*###~~/\/\/~

And they'd use colors, bolds, italics, weird fonts. Of course, I set my chat program to filter all that bullshit and give me pure text. And people would get annoyed that I didn't get their cute malware-laden custom emoticons.

Re:the end of an era

[hjf]

msn actually let you set a custom nickname in a contact-per-contact basis. or you could set it up to display only mail addresses.

i had a friend, a guy in his 20s, who kept changing his nickname to "i miss you so much" or other faggotries. I just set a custom name for him.

Re:the end of an era

[hjf]

That either sucked or was good. I didn't mind colorful nickmanes (you had to install "Plus" to see them properly), but it really annoyed me that some people added leading spaces to their nicknames. Never got why they did that.

I hated people who added the retard bat emoticon to their nicks so it kept flapping its wings. That one was annoying as hell.

But then again, there should be some sort of middle ground. Facebook is dead boring, it insists so much in people having all the same looks. No color, no customizations of some sort. Nothing. Myspace proved that it's a really bad idea (never used it myself but i do remember seeing screenshots of how awful it looked when girls added "glitter" to it). But FB is just boring and horrible. I want to use just my name (not first name last name), I don't care about the blue color scheme but some people do and I wouldn't mind if you could change that.

FB is really as totalitarian and communist as it can get (except it's blue and not red).

Re:the end of an era

[UltraZelda64]

Maybe they wanted it that way, because they don't want nosy people they know to easily find and harass them? Same with a new phone number; no one you know will know it until you tell them, and for most people in most situations, that is a bonus when it comes to privacy. And there tends to be something "special" and "personal" about custom nicknames, otherwise they wouldn't have made them up, and instead would have just used their own real name. I don't see why you're complaining, because judging by four Slashdot username, you're guilty of the same exact thing.

And most people tend to use one or two usernames across all web/Internet services. If you go ahead and use your own example of creating the same username (your name), and all of your friends choose a different "cute nickname" for themselves every day when signing up for a new service, then chances are you'll be first to be hacked royally across multiple sites/accounts. Everyone else would have to be hacked one-by-one, per site (unless their main e-mail is compromised and contains "welcome" messages with usernames). So there's a strong security feature hiding behind their method of using a different account name every day just to piss you off.

If they want you to know how to contact them using a particular method, they'll tell you... or you'll have some other way of communicating with them to ask if you really want to.

Re:the end of an era

[SuricouRaven]

Emoticons should just stay as simple text! I'm constantly annoyed by programs that turn my :> into a smiley face. It's not a smiley - it's a beak. :> General/happy. :>- Silly. /:> confused.

Re:the end of an era

[loonwings]

~:> Nice firm crest.

Re:the end of an era

[hjf]

hehe well there were some funny emoticons actually. i had one, shortcut 1313 and it was a face with eyebrows going up and down
1414 was a more dirty look
1515 was a dirty wink and a kiss. those were hilarious. and kids actually used those numbers in real life. like saying "whoaaaa thirteen thirteen!!!"

http://s600.beta.photobucket.com/user/moon20_album/media/emoticons/1313.gif.html (weirdly accelerated, it should be slower)

"123:" was a funny "hmmm..." look. people still type 123: and 1313 in facebook chat.

Re:the end of an era

[hobarrera]

While this is mostly irrelevant for north american users, MSN messenger, later Windows Live Messenger, was a big part of spanish-speaking internet users lives. Oh, the memories of using it to pick up girls ;) back then when you could add anyone and they wouldn't freak out because "they don't know you", like people do in facebook. Late night chats with groups of people, those annnoying emoticons, pink fonts, useless "winks"... it's all in the past now. Oh yes, and girls showing their boobs on cam as well. Friendships, fights, contact blocks...

To be fair, Facebook chat killed Messenger. It's convenient, simple to use and it works well in small screens like netbook machines.

I don't know what particular country you're from, but here in Argentina, Google Talk killed MS Messenger long before facebook came along. And yes, the rest of what you say about WLM is common here as well. We've all picked up plenty of girls through it.

Re:the end of an era

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always set your client to display the email address instead of the user generated nickname.

Re:the end of an era

[hjf]

No seas gato nadie usa gtalk. sabes quien usa gtalk? los ñoños que usan google+ jaja

Re:the end of an era

[hobarrera]

This is a relatively recent feature. I think they enabled this circa 2006/2007, and it wan't until about a year later that this was stored server-side. While this was stored client side, it meant you'd have to rename contacts on every device you owned/used.

Re:the end of an era

[jader3rd]

Maybe they wanted it that way, because they don't want nosy people they know to easily find and harass them?

But you'd only be added to someone's Messenger contact list if you accepted them as a contact. Someone couldn't use a Messenger address to go fishing for real names.

Re:the end of an era

[jader3rd]

I agree. It made searching for someone's contact impossible because they weren't using Romanized characters in their name.

Axing on March 15?

[CajunArson]

No No No, for the Ides of March you need to STAB messenger to death. We come here to bury Messenger, not to praise it!

Re:Axing on March 15?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely messenger was an ambitious app. Et tu Skype?

Sucks for IM

[Tridus]

If you use messenger for IM purposes still, this is a huge downgrade. Skype is comparatively terrible when it comes to text chat.

Re:Sucks for IM

[Anonymous Coward]

Example(s) please.

Having used both for a good long while Skype has proven, to myself at least, to be vastly superior in terms of IM, VOIP, Video, Contact management, File Transfer, Cross device Compatibility.

It would appear the Microsoft has come to the same conclusion.

What's your beef?

Don't kill the messenger

[tekrat]

Apparently, even this bit of centuries old wisdom is lost on Microsoft...

Re:KUTMSN

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we bring back IRC. Really wasn't it the best? No "like" button. No hipster wannabes eating up IP spaces and valuable bandwidth and if you happened to fine one just open up a copy of Nuke and deal with them the old fashion way.

They just emailed everyone on their lists!

[SGDarkKnight]

"Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013

I've never used messenger, never signed up for it, never even been to the registration page, and I still got an email notice telling me that I need to switch to skype. I think they just emailed everyone who has ever used hotmail, or any variation since it's creation.

Re:They just emailed everyone on their lists!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think they just emailed everyone who has ever used hotmail"

Sounds likely to me as I've yet to receive any notification of this on my two Messanger accounts. Both were created with Gmail accounts.

Re:They just emailed everyone on their lists!

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't get one, despite being an MSN user - perhaps you got mine?

Re:They just emailed everyone on their lists!

[Anonymous Coward]

And I have an hotmail account (well "outlook" now, but anyway) that I didn't check in months. I just opened it 5 minutes ago and ... no. nothing. I didn't receive any email from Microsoft.

And yes, I used to use it with live messenger until a few years ago, So, who actually received that email ? (nb: I'm not in the US)

Re:They just emailed everyone on their lists!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a hotmail account can sign into messenger. So mailing everyone with a hotmail account was the proper choice.

SIP+IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

I am thinking to use SIP on a centralized server (as NAT can be a pain to get through)

Well.. if your providers already support IPv6, go for it - you won't need NAT.

which messenger?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's Windows Messenger and Live/MSN Messenger. Which one is being retired?

No they aren't

[EzInKy]

Google makes the majority of its money gathering data on the users of its services so it is pretty obvious they will be "listening" in to every conversation that they can.

Re:No they aren't

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, you're a paranoid idiot. This data isn't used or even kept at Google, go troll somewhere else.

Re:No they aren't

[UltraZelda64]

Google has to obey some sort of limits when it comes to collecting data, otherwise they risk get sued and/or examined by the government for illegal activity/privacy invasion... right? I really doubt that Google's data collecting as as extreme as people like you make it out to be. FWIW, I search Google and YouTube with the history turned off, and that's probably the key data they would use. If they sneak into everyone's personal e-mails, phone calls, voicemails, and/or text messages without permission, then they're just opening themselves up to some serious legal trouble.

Re:No they aren't

[GPLHost-Thomas]

I don't know about Hangout (I never used it, it's flash based, right?), but I don't think Google has the ability to wiretap my OTR protected XMPP chat.

Try PSYC?

[feld]

I'm told that PSYC is much better than XMPP -- both on the protocol level, the way the stream is decoded, and the ability to scale.

http://about.psyc.eu/Comparison

Re:Try PSYC?

[am 2k]

I'm told that PSYC is much better than XMPP

Yes, but only by the developers of PSYC. Who would have thought.

I tried that protocol a few years ago. Unlike the XMPP transports, their implementation of other protocols (like XMPP) were really really awful. Only the IRC interface was usable, and IRC clients aren't really designed for instant messaging. Clients talking that protocol were non-existing.

I'm very experienced with XMPP. It does have the XML framing issue they mention, but it also has a lot of good parts to it as well. That comparison you linked is also outdated, nowadays there are XMPP extensions for some of the issues they list (One-To-Many Distribution, Network Reliability, Profile Exchange).

Existing clients everywhere

[mdsharpe]

Makes me wonder what they're going to do about the Messenger clients built in to: Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, etc. If these clients are going to stop working, will they push out replacement updates for all of them in time? I doubt it. The current version of Windows 8 Skype app is awful - if that's going to be their primary IM solution on Windows 8 then they're going to have to improve it pretty rapidly between now and mid-March.

Re:Existing clients everywhere

[shutdown -p now]

Why would they stop working? The client is going away, not the protocol.

Re:Existing clients everywhere

[mdsharpe]

You're right. According to Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/microsoft-messenger-service-not-going-anywhere-just-yet/) XMPP support will remain until October, and then the network itself will be turned off in March 2014.

Skype has no chance

[Anonymous Coward]

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/03/facebook-voice-messaging/

How on earth will Skype compete with that? You can now attach WAV files to FB! how did we miss this on Slashdot??? I certainly believe that FB deserves the share price to at the very least double now. Skype which is just like those other ancient forms of telecommunications out there that merely rely on direct communication should really be worried right about now.

It just seems that $8bn purchase of Skype was totally and utterly wasted. What they should of done is kept messenger running as is, dump Skype and invest in some R&D to have the same feature as FB.

Re:Skype has no chance

[Kalriath]

It's funny you say that, because you can also log into Skype with a Facebook account. And do you know why? Because Skype powers Facebook's real-time voice/video chat features.

Yet AIM marches on

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of wonder if the heads of AOL forgot about AIM and the engineers just keep a low profile.

Re:KUTMSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring it back? It never went anywhere; the Eternal September crowd just went to social networks.

Bring back Microsoft Comic Chat!

[howardd21]

Who needs any of these when you have the opportunity to go back ti Microsoft Comic Chat? http://www.digitalspace.com/avatars/cc1.jpg

I never got the email.

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Annoying because I use it regularly to communicate with customers and vendors in China and Skype isn't available for BlackBerry. I guess Yahoo! Messenger ugh.

Re:I never got the email.

[Dunge]

Same thing here

Re:I never got the email.

[egranlund]

I have Skype on my 9930. Haven't tried phone calls but the messaging works fine.

Re:I never got the email.

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Only available on Verizon phones.

Microsoft doesn't read Shakespeare

[Muad'Dave]

Haven't they ever heard of Beware the Ides of March ? This will not end well, I fear.

Pidgin

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to Pidgin, I honestly can't remember which contacts are on Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, etc. I think, sometimes, conversations even carry over from one channel to the next without me realizing it.

And, last I checked, there wasn't a Skype connector for Pidgin - so this just means I won't be using Microsoft anymore.

Re:Pidgin

[joaommp]

You must have checked a long time ago. There is, indeed, a Skype plugin for libpurple-based messengers which includes Pidgin.

Re:Pidgin

[loonwings]

Yes but Skype must be running for it to work, and it's buggy at best. Not good enough.

Re:Pidgin

[joaommp]

Still, there is one. I didn't say it worked perfectly. And he said there wasn't. There is. Might be useless, but there is.

Anyway, even the native Skype client for Linux is crap. Crashes frequently, sometimes it hangs on 100% cpu usage and has to be killed and looks like a surgery made with a jackhammer.

Security guy

[Anonymous Coward]

I block Skype, it's prohibited by security policy as peer-to-peer. I tell users that if they want to Skype while travelling, carry their own laptop with them, too.

Re:KUTMSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Freenode, Undernet, DALnet and EFnet are all still thriving. As of now I'm on at least 6 networks in over 20 channels.

I'd say IRC is still thriving and going strong.

But with people like the OP talking about nuking, I'm glad for IRC. We have the ability to gline kiddies and prevent harassment.

Messenger or Windows Live Messenger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Skype share applications? What will we do now that Net Meeting and its progeny are finally being murdered?

Re:Messenger or Windows Live Messenger?

[Kalriath]

Citrix (Gotomeeting) and Cisco (Webex) are likely chomping at the bit right now.

Dumb move

[bobjr94]

Im pretty sure the IT guys at my wife's school, and likely tons of other businesses, will not install skype on their computer, she hardly got away with getting messenger. Skype has a bad reputation and is seen as something kids use to video chat with their boyfriends and girlfriends, many don't even know it can be used a text messenger application.

et tu Ballmer?

[devforhire]

Interesting they chose the Ides of March.

Retroshare

[Hatta]

Consider Retroshare. It's an encrypted friend to friend network, with chat, filesharing, and a VOIP plugin. It uses the PGP web of trust model, so a little user education is necessary. But it's got a nice clicky gui and works pretty well. The more people who use it, the better it will get, so give it a look.

At the risk of getting modded down as a fanboy...

[uptownguy]

Your post was insightful, informative, a fascinating slice of history and an excellent all-around summary. I don't mean to take away from any of it.
But when you wrote:

To date there's no match for messenger's "share photos", which let you drag and drop pictures to the chat window and have them automatically resized and compressed to something more decent, and shown "big" in the chat window. With the option, of course, to download full size and keep

That's not quite true. I regularly use iMessage (the client is called Messages on OSX, the service is called iMessage) to do exactly that. Having used both, I can say that I prefer the iMessage implementation. Not only can I drag and drop photos (songs, files etc.) but the ability to share with both people using the Desktop client (other OSX users) and iOS users (iPhones and iPads) is convenient and VERY useful. It sure would make my life easier if the rest of you would just join me here inside the walled garden...

Relatedly?

[Brucelet]

Ok, they're both related to skype, but does anyone really think these two items belong in the same story?

Re:KUTMSN

[halltk1983]

Agreed. I'm on two private networks for my employer, and two public networks. Total of 27 channels, for various purposes from socialization to design or problem response. Works great.

Re:At the risk of getting modded down as a fanboy.

[myNameIsNotImportant]

The only problem is --- iMessage is not a cross-platform solution. Personally, I'd need it to support OSX, iOS, Android (linux would be nice), and, least important of all (to me), Windows.

Skype protocol cracked?

[dgharmon]

skype-open-source

Once again, MS says, "screw the pesky users"

[gestalt_n_pepper]

VB6, Winforms, VBScript, Windows 8.... It's Microsoft once again saying, "Screw your *and* your client's investments in time, money and learning." We just had a 20-something developer with no business sense show a clueless manager with no technical expertise a new technology and we're running with it!

Re:Once again, MS says, "screw the pesky users"

[shutdown -p now]

VB6, Winforms, VBScript

Given that all of the above still work, what's your point?

(yes, you can't develop VB6 apps on Vista and above, but they run just fine even on Win8)

Re:Once again, MS says, "screw the pesky users"

[gestalt_n_pepper]

"Working" is such an interesting term. In our lab environment VBScript started crashing after some otherwise unremarkable Windows security updates that corporate would not let us roll back, necessitating our rewriting everything in Powershell. Winforms will "work" until your client demands that the application be web accessible, at which point YOU get to spend the money and time to recode, or lose the business. Then you recode in WPF and/or Silverlight. As we speak, Microsoft efforts on Silverlight and WPF are shall we say, "in dissaray (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-splits-up-its-xaml-team-whats-the-fallout/9807). How would you like to spend about 6 years learning these technologies, only to find them obsolete because decided to take us back a decade to the wonder years of HTML and javascript?

At this point, if you asked me which MS technology was worth learning, I sure couldn't tell you. Not anything to do with Windows phone or Windows 8, that's for sure. So what do you do?

Re:Once again, MS says, "screw the pesky users"

[shutdown -p now]

"Working" is such an interesting term. In our lab environment VBScript started crashing after some otherwise unremarkable Windows security updates that corporate would not let us roll back, necessitating our rewriting everything in Powershell.

VBScript works just fine for millions of people out there. Have you considered that it is, perhaps, not broken as such, but there is some group policy setting that you need to change to have your scripts run? Or maybe you're using some third-party (or house-coded) ActiveX object in your scripts that broke?

Winforms will "work" until your client demands that the application be web accessible, at which point YOU get to spend the money and time to recode, or lose the business

Well, duh. WinForms was never advertised as a solution for web apps, and this has nothing to do with how well it is supported or developerd. You'll have the same exact problem if you write in app in (fully supported and actively developed) Swing or Qt.

As we speak, Microsoft efforts on Silverlight and WPF are shall we say, "in dissaray (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-splits-up-its-xaml-team-whats-the-fallout/9807). How would you like to spend about 6 years learning these technologies, only to find them obsolete because decided to take us back a decade to the wonder years of HTML and javascript?

While I agree that Windows UI story is a mess, it still isn't a mess in a way that you have claimed. WPF has not gone anywhere, you can still write apps in it, and they still work (yes, on Win8, too). Ditto Silverlight.

As for Win8 Metro apps, while it does add the option of HTML5/JS for UI, it does not force you to use that - the other (and more powerful, actually) framework for Metro apps is called "XAML", and it's basically Silverlight rewritten in native code - so all your 6 years of learning WPF and Silverlight are directly applicable with only minor adjustments.

At this point, if you asked me which MS technology was worth learning, I sure couldn't tell you. Not anything to do with Windows phone or Windows 8, that's for sure. So what do you do?

You use any of the half-dozen existing, established frameworks that do the job just fine - same as they always did - and keep working.

Re:Once again, MS says, "screw the pesky users"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds a whole lot like you're full of shit.

Re:Once again, MS says, "screw the pesky users"

[BitZtream]

I don't know about Win8 as I haven't bothered/needed to try yet, but I maintain a VB6 app using the VB6 IDE on Windows 7 currently. Works the same as it always has. Add VB6ScrollWheel fix and it sucks a little less than they originally intended too.

Kill Confirmed

[theNAM666]

After 100 million installs of Shoot the Messenger [www.grc.com/stm/shootthemessenger.htm], it's about time.

Re:Kill Confirmed

[mdsharpe]

Unrelated - the old Messenger service is nothing to do with MSN. The GRC article even says so: "The first thing to understand is that the Windows Messenger Service is completely different from, and not in any way related to, "MSN Messenger", "Windows Messenger", or any other well-known instant messaging system."

Re:Kill Confirmed

[theNAM666]

It was a smart-ass comment, but this is somewhat like pointing out that one version of Outlook is entirely different and data-incompatible with another version of Outlook... the distinction is largely lost for the average user trying to deal with the crud that MS hoists on its users.

Re:Kill Confirmed

[mdsharpe]

I was trying to prevent confusion, not be a "smart ass", so I apologise if I gave the wrong impression. However, this is nothing like comparing versions of Outlook. Outlook has always been an end-user e-mail client, wheras the two messengers in question are not alike. One is an IM client, the other was a built-in Windows system service that one typically interacted with at the command line ("net send" etc.).

Re:Kill Confirmed

[theNAM666]

Fair enough, especially as I *was* trying to be a smart ass in the original comment :). As I recall, insomuch as I avoid Windows like the plague but still have to use it in corporate environments, there was some overlap in services (or perhaps just confusion), but I've been known to be wrong.

LYNC

[DarthVain]

I know my messenger or communicator or whatever got screwed over already when MS changed over to "MS Lync", so now they are changing to Skype?

Meh. I just won't use it at work anymore, too much of a PITA.

Outside that its FB messanger now anyway. (Who I hear are entering the VOIP and video relms as well, likely to position themselves against MS Skype)

Re:LYNC

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably should not have posted. It is clear that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:LYNC

[Kalriath]

You realise Facebook video chat is Skype right?

No, thought not.

Also, that Lync (formerly Office Communicator) is completely unrelated to Windows Live Messenger? If anything, they'll be looking to phase that out in favour of Yammer.

technology vs network

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in slashdot is worried about the technology...
We already have XMPP.
We don't need new servers.

We need to get those users migrated.

Re:At the risk of getting modded down as a fanboy.

[uptownguy]

Couldn't agree more.
That IS the problem.
And a pretty major one.
Hence my last line about inviting everyone to drink the kool-aid and join me in the walled garden. It really would make my life easier, if everyone would just overlook questions about mysterious pre-approval of applications and Apple getting a 30% cut of everything and just join me here where the toys are shiny, the dragging and dropping works just fine, and no one is axing any instant messenger platform. At least for now.

Re:KUTMSN

[SuricouRaven]

I've only resorted to nuke once, to deal with a troll who came to bother us when there were no admins around. The obnoxious type of troll, who just posts lines full of profanity and childish insults.

Skype replacement? XMPP+IAX

[GameboyRMH]

SIP and NAT just don't get along, SIP is made for an ideal IPv6 world.

Technologically there's no trouble at all making a Skype replacement but try getting people, and worse yet telcos, to accept no-cost voice, text and video communications. See also: The existence of WhatsApp right in the face of XMPP.

skype UI is horrid for IM

[Espectr0]

Not only that, the skype UI just plain sucks for IM. No tabbed chats on compact mode, and on regular mode they are vertical and weak, weak notifications, non-functional recent conversations tab and lots more. I emailed them about it and they told me that indeed they were revising their client due to missing features that are already in WLM and know lots of people like/use.

WLM may not be the best or most used out there, but at least its UI works a lot better for IM compared to skype

Re:KUTMSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, EFnet is back? And DALnet is thriving? I was there in 1998 when DAL died and we moved to another network. Hmm...

used?

[aahpandasrun]

And I still know nobody that currently uses or has ever used Microsoft Messenger or MSN. It was exclusively AIM for us. I hear it's popular in certain regions though, but MSN was always one of the first things I uninstalled.

Thank God

[RedHackTea]

Now I can do video chat with these MSNers going over to Skype. Yes, the Linux Skype client has been in beta for a million years, but it still works like a champ. I could never get video calls to work in pidgin, amsn, etc.

Now, I just have to hope they don't axe the Linux client... keep the protocol up-to-date on it...

In other news, anyone still using AIM?

Re:Thank God

[crhylove]

Define, "Like a champ"

IMHO Skype for Linux is almost as crappy as skype for windows. I'm pretty surprised that google hangouts is actually on par, and by that I mean sub-par as well.

I've been looking for alternatives hi and low: VLCVC, Jitsi, Elastix.... So far I haven't found any video conferencing that's:

A> Good
B> Reliable
C> Multiplatform

Most of them seem to be a mix of b and c, and none of them are a.

Re: At the risk of getting modded down as a fanboy

[dugancent]

iMessage is available on OSX, but none of the others you mentioned.

100+ Million? Not really.

[kriston]

Sure, they say they're sending to 100+ Million users, but only a tiny fraction of those are actual people. They could have saved a lot of bandwidth.

Skype & IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Skype work with IPv6?

Messenger 1.0...

[Kaenneth]

I contracted at MS testing Messenger 1.0; it was so nice back then, 100 KILObyte install, unicode native, just plain worked.

Then the Bloat...

Re:KUTMSN

[ganjadude]

dont make me smack you in the face with a large trout!!

missing tag

[Anonymous Coward]

andnothingofvaluewaslost

ohh ohh

[Anonymous Coward]

msnwhores.com going out of businesss..

In China...

[Jackyshadow]

Windows Live Messenger (although most Chinese only refer it as MSN) is one of the two major IM services in China (the other one being Tencent QQ). It is so dominant in the market that MS is planning to keep it alive there.

In fact, it might be the only commercially successful consumer product MS has in China (Pirated Windows and Office are so rampant that nobody pay for them. XBOX game consoles are also not officially available in China).

Yeah, if only it were two...

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

Many use both Messenger and Skype, but Microsoft wants everyone to just use the latter. It doesn’t make sense for the company to maintain and update two communication tools for consumers.

coz, like, Microsoft Office Communications Server, aka Lync, doesn't exist and isn't in any way related to MS Messenger.

Skype is no replacement for text chatting

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone use skype for text based chatting? It is no replacement for MSN messenger.

I can't stand the fact you can't send message to people offline. Both parties need to be online and if you send a message and they are offline it will be sent to them next time you are both online, even if you are on invisible, revealing that you are in fact online. You can also tell if someone is online but invisible by simply sending a message to them, if it the message doesn't have a rotating circle next to it you can be sure they are online.

Also have you ever logged into another computer/device with skype after you've been chatting on a different computer? You end up getting some of the messages again on that device.

Skype is shit for text based chatting.

Slightly different notification in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Have noticed that in the notification I received (live.co.uk account) there was no date mentioned, leaving such headings as "So what's happening between now and the retirement?" and "So what's happening after the retirement?" instead... Guess that may put an end to my usage of Adium then...