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Google Drops XMPP Support
Cbs228 writes "During last week's Google I/O conference, the company announced a replacement for its aging Talk instant messenger: Google Hangouts. Hangouts, which is only available for Android, iOS, and Chrome, offers closer integration with Google+. Unfortunately, the new product drops support for the XMPP instant messaging protocol, which has been an integral part of Talk for over ten years. XMPP delivers instant messages to desktop clients, like Pidgin, and enables communication between users on different instant messaging networks. Hangouts users attempting to communicate with contacts on non-Google servers, such as jabber.org, have found that all communications have been suddenly and inexplicably severed. A Google account is now required to communicate with Hangouts users. Google Hangouts joins the ranks of an already-crowded ecosystem of closed, incompatible chat products like Skype."
Interesting, because Google Wave was based on XMPP and Google was integral to the creation of the Jingle extension that enabled video chatting over XMPP. Note that no end date has been set for Talk yet, but the end must surely be nigh given Google's recent history of axing products like Reader and CalDAV support from their calendar app without much notice.
Google's dropping support for CalDAV which I think was the primary supported way of syncing with iCal.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html
I thought that what they were eliminating was XMPP federation, which is what's used to link all the different XMPP servers
But that's a far cry from eliminating XMPP entirely. I understood that they were continuing to use XMPP, with some extensions, and since those extensions were not supported by others, they were disabling the federation to other systems.
From what I've read, it's still XMPP, but they've just severed server-server communications so you can only talk to Google+ accounts over XMPP.
Yes, I mixed up the file format (ical) with the sync protocol (caldav). Thanks for catching that.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Keep in mind that you can *still* plug your Google Account credentials into any XMPP chat client and use that account to talk to others who have a Google Account. Google isn't -yet- pulling the plug on XMPP client support; they're pulling the plug on XMPP server-to-server federation.
This move by Google is still a bowl of shit, but you retain the power to use the client (and plugins) of your choice when talking on the Google Network.
Actually, that's the nice thing about XMPP - there are LOTS of XMPP servers (sometimes also called Jabber servers). A list of public (free) servers can be found at https://list.jabber.at/ The great thing about Jabber/XMPP (and the thing that Google just shut off), is that jabber servers can find each other on the net. Therefore, if you have an account as alice@jabber.org, and your friend has the account bob@example.com, you can message each other just as you do now. the XMPP server at jabber.org will find the XMPP server at example.com and give it your message for bob to deliver. It's just like e-mail - only in real (or close to) time.
You don't understand. The summary said "only." Here on Slashdot we celebrate only having read the summary and flying off the handle.
I want this account deleted.
It's weasel-worded and misleading. You still need to get whitelisted to be allowed to access CalDAV - you have to write them a letter justifying yourself, otherwise you have to use the proprietary Google calendar API. They're just trying to create lock-in.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/bugmenot/
http://www.mailinator.com/ (Use the alternate domains if necessary.)
You're welcome. :)
Only older accounts were able to remain separate. Any new accounts (be it YouTube, Gmail, or any other services they offer) are Google+.
It's even more infuriating given:
"I've personally been quite sad at the industry's behavior around all these things. If you take something as simple as IM, we've had an open offer to interoperate forever." - Larry Page, May 15, 2013
They aren't dropping client-server XMPP, just server-server XMPP. 3rd-party clients still work with Google servers (albeit only for one-to-one text chat). AFAIK, that is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. See: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/hands-on-with-hangouts-googles-new-text-and-video-chat-architecture/
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
This was it. I remember from the I/O keynote, complaints about Microsoft exploiting some open standard to establish one-way compatibility, but I couldn't remember the details. Thanks. This comment ought to be at the top, it's most likely the reason XMPP support was dropped.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.