Slashdot Mirror
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.
My phone told me that an update to google talk was available, and that it would be replaced with hangouts. Google+ hasnt had a lot of traction with me, so I am not really sure if this is just going to be one less google product that I will be using now.
Ok, so Google Talk is going away at some point, everyone I talk to who uses a different tool will no longer be reachable with "Hangouts", and I'll be confined only to my excruciatingly small circle of Google+ friends...
Why should I use Hangouts? It talks to only a few people in my circle of friends, all of whom also have accounts with some non-google resource.
Wouldn't this be yet another reason to abandon Google+? I mean, it's great 'n all, but almost nobody I know uses it. Which kinda defeats the purpose of a social network. It's like, let's invent a social network for hermits. Nobody talks to you, but that's what, you know, is supposed to happen. I haven't heard of anything so useless since the Anarchists Union.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Does anyone know whether the new protocol will be undocumented or if it is documented, if there is any resemblance to xmpp? Hopefully Google will allow xmpp bridges.
I am just worried that Google is trying to do more to force us to use their tools, rather than allowing us to use our favourite messaging clients., but with their service.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's news to me that Google is dropping iCal support from Calendar. The whole rationale for them dropping support for ActiveSync was that standards based iCalendar support was available and most devices support that now (ie noone uses Windows Phone, they are all using Android or iPhone). So does someone have a supporting reference for that, or is the Unknown Lamer just confused?
Nothing beats its simplicity to me.
It sure isn't easy getting all your friends on it, but sooner or later they will come back when they get tired of their current service trying to be everything at once, spreading itself too thin.
Having tons of different services for everything is hard to remember and work with, but the same is true for one service that does tons of different things.
Shame on you Google. I've used Gtalk since it was released. I don't care about the cross platform communication much, but do have a few friends that I know connected to me through other platform. I have convinced several rather computer illiterate friends to use Gtalk so that we could keep in touch by IMs and know when each other was available, introducing them to Google and getting them a Google account in the process. I have no interest in Google's "social media" offerings, or any social media platform for that matter, including Facebook (let the NSA get their info on me in other ways, I'm not going to do their job for them). I really don't even know what Google Hangouts is, but the name tells me that I don't want to know and I will not switch to it when Gtalk goes away (although that seems to not even be an option since my main desktops usually run Windows).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
My friends and I used to be on Hotmail using MSN Messenger. Then we moved to Gmail when Messenger died, using Pidgin to keep everyone in the same circle (Yahoo, Gmail, and the few Hotmail stragglers). Now XMPP is gone, that leaves everyone looking for a new chat protocol, hopefully one within Pidgin.
It feels a bit like an open chat registry might be the way to go, as companies phase out their support for pure chat clients. I still need to chat and Facebook isn't going to cut it.
It's not clear to me whether or not they're totally going to drop it.
Still, I think this blows.
Still better than talking to a hand. Google doesnt listen to the users, they dont even have a place to post any concerns/complaints (probably because there was no way to automate it).
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Pretty soon they'll drop HTML support
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ok, so Google Talk is going away at some point, everyone I talk to who uses a different tool will no longer be reachable with "Hangouts", and I'll be confined only to my excruciatingly small circle of Google+ friends
...calm down, Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts...or that Android has passed 900Million Activations (Facebook has 700Million Active users). It works straight from gmail which has over 425Million users...hell there is even an iPhone app. Hell you can load it up...and still chat to people only using talk!
There are advantages to having a Google+ account, but its pretty limited...you can chat to 10 users at once. The bottom line though the success of Google+(growing faster than twitter, While Facebook suffers fatigue) its not part of this discussion.
They really should change their company slogan.
Where is the difference to asshole MS of the 90s? Can't see it.
How any serious geek can defend or use google is beyond me.
They have an Android app, an iOS app, a Chrome plugin, and a browser agnostic web page.
The old days of Google acting as a good net citizen are long gone. Money always corrupts, and its envy of Facebook and Apple walled gardens became irresistible.
Android is a sort of open garden, but Google got a taste of running a walled one with Android's Market/Play, and cemented its walls with Google+ and by making a full Google Account mandatory for it, Gmail's pseudonymous users absolutely not welcome. In the end, it'll be just another Facebook for a captive audience as advertising targets. Very profitable.
Dropping XMPP is just part of this process. A window to the walled garden was open and it was allowing federation to be done out of control by the Google empire. Easy to see this block coming and the window being closed.
The IETF specifically mentions interoperability as a founding goal in its Mission Statement. By dropping interoperability with other IM providers through XMPP, Google is making very clear where it now stands. It wants the whole cake, and being a good net citizen be damned.
This is a 180 degree term to their old philosophy of open source / open protocols.
I always thought it was so weird when people used shit like MSN or Yahoo! for their chat. When someone gave me that as their IM contact, I would just tell them "look, I'm probably never going to end up talking to you, then, because I'm not going to setup an account on a proprietary service just to talk to one person".
Anyone that uses Google Voice for voip outside of gmail is routing their calls through Google Talk. This is pretty popular on Android using SIP and a pbx account but there are also some standalone applications that handle it. If Google ends up dropping Google Talk there are going to be a lot of pissed off Google Voice users.
They're embracing and extending XMPP, but by denying federation it's no longer XMPP, just based on it.
Although this is not exactly MS-style "embrace, extend, extinguish", it's not very different in practice. It's still deliberately obstructive of standards and interoperability.
I still need to chat and Facebook isn't going to cut it.
Maybe not for you, but for most people I think it will. Most of the Internet users on the planet have Facebook accounts and it's increasingly the best way to chat or contact anyone. Google is pretty much just driving people back to Facebook with this. As long as it's all proprietary, you might as well go with the one with the biggest available group.
E pluribus unum
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.
Just deleted Google Chrome off my computers and have never felt so happy I run my own jabber server.
I wonder how long until Google will retire Gtalk for good so that Google+ can take over in a bid to get more than 4 users.
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.
I've been using AIM since the 90s... I was using the 5.9 version which was basically meant for Windows 98 because all it did was chat, opposed to their newer monstrosities. I only recently started using Trillian instead of the old aim client, which is just another client similar to Pidgin in functionality.
I'm kind of curious how long AIM will last.
This is old news. This was one of the first comments on the "Google releases Hangouts" a few days ago.
I've lost contact with about 40% of my contacts so far. Of those whom I can still talk to, about 20% use google with an xmpp client, and the other 40% are not google users (they use some other XMPP server).
My apologies. I must be new here.
Of course you would know that if you used Google Talk
You have always been able to add multiple users to Google Talk without needing Google+.
There are some serious privacy concerns with Google+, and a lot of people smart enough to avoid the whole Facebook clusterfuck are not at all keen to surrender to Google even if Google appears to be somewhat more responsible with your data.
I've never found a problem sending pictures to people, even groups of people. Why do you feel you need to surrender all your privacy instead of just emailing a photo?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This mostly comes down to a battle between 2x platforms: Google vs. Microsoft. I consider myself a pretty avid Microsoft supporter, but if you look at the facts, I kind of think that Microsoft started this fight by:
1) Buying Skype and pitting Skype against Talk.
2) Their Scroogled campaign that pitted Outlook against Gmail
3) Connecting Outlook.com to the Talk API when Google would have preferred that Microsoft federate skype/outlook/hotmail/live/passport via XMPP.
It's that third point surrounding XMPP federation that this all comes down to. When Microsoft decided to not federate via XMPP with the Outlook/Skype consumer products they were saying that they only wanted to establish 1-way communication with Google's platform. There is no doubt that this pissed Google off because Microsoft is trying to take away their market share while also taking advantage of their services and open architecture. Google's offered up XMPP for many years and Microsoft never connected until they had a mail product that was capable of trading market share (in one direction).
Microsoft is clearly not against XMPP because they do support XMPP in their commercial IM product, Lync (which I'm a regular user of and competent in supporting/deploying). I've considered many scenarios but can't figure out why Microsoft wouldn't want to enable XMPP for its consumer products as a way of communicating with Google Talk contacts other than to discourage interoperability with their consumer products; e.g. keep everyone on Skype.
I know that some might argue that Microsoft connected to Google the way they did so that it could pull over all of your Google Contacts and already authorized XMPP invites, but in my opinion they could have just showed you a list of all your current Google Talk XMPP contacts and asked you to place check marks next to any that you wanted to invite to your Microsoft Account contact list. With all that said, maybe its as simple as that someone in the right position at Microsoft failing to comprehend the scenario.
I saw it happen, plus the resulting confusion. What's really shocking is how long ago it was. It was around 1985. English teacher gave hard assignment. Student said "that's so gay!" meant as a generic pejorative. Teacher thought he was being called a homosexual and student was in deep shit.
It happened, over a quarter century ago. I can cut the 1985 teacher some slack for not knowing. I can cut a 2013 teacher some slack for disciplining a student for bitching about homework. But I can't cut anyone slack in 2013 for not knowing "gay" is a generic pejorative. If you don't know gay is a generic pejorative by now, then you also probably missed the memo that it means homosexual. You probably think it means "happy."
Words. They're like tech skills. Keep up or be left behind.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This isn't evil; it's stupid. It's not even embrace/extend/extinguish. It's embrace/back_off/get_forgotten. Google is kidding themselves if they think anyone cares about .. what's the name of their obscure niche chat product again?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It is, despite attempts by the PC police to make it otherwise..
Google seems to be thinking like Microsoft/Apple these days..
Well actually Google is not thinking like either. Apple managed to cash in on early adopter money three times...but failed to compete in a mature market, its early monopoly status thrown away for sitting on huge about of cash, Microsoft throwing it all away to chance mobile market share by dumbing down its Desktop experience to that of a tablet :), Google is doing neither of those things.
Neither Apple or Microsoft is competing in the social networking sphere (ignoring photo sharing sites) and both were happy to ride the Facebook integration, the thrust of your post...although both have stepped back their integration in light of certain developments around the Andoird Phone/App Facebook thing whatever that was. In fact Google is the only one taking on Facebook and is doing a great job at it.
Ironically to need a Google+ account to use Hangouts
Google starts projects and kills them off as much as people change their underwear...
But there is a challenge to GMail coming that is privacy based!.
See:
https://startmail.com
I can't wait untill the beta testing starts - which is soon based on the email I got tonight. I use https://startpage.com instead of Google, and soon I'll be able to dump GMail. I don't mess with Google+ - why would anyone.....
Thanks for pointing that out; 829820 < 1233886. I clearly had the right to be harsher on you, heathen. :P
I want this account deleted.
MS has a monopoly on what today?
You don't get to decide when a word is pejorative to a group that's historically been targeted with it. I agree strongly with George Carlin when he talks about the ludicrousness of "bad words." There are no "bad words." But you know what there *are?* There are words that have been used offensively against a minority group so often that they've become hurtful *to* that group of people.
You have a right to use those words anyway. You have a right to not care. You have a right to claim that because YOU don't find the word offensive, no one else has a right to do so, either.
You also have a right to decide that decades of discrimination against a particular group were so awful, you'll avoid using a word or two -- not because those words are "bad," but because they serve as reminders of abuse, insults, and ignorance. You have a right to decide to change your speaking habits *ever* so slightly as a way of demonstrating to this person or persons that you don't agree with the way those words were used against them.
You have a right to decide that empathy and acknowledgement is more meaningful than saying a certain collection of phonemes.
Or not to.
Seriously Google needs to look at how much shaving off the Do no Evil badge will impair their brand.
Personally there are three products I use and think are important from Google.
1) Google search - best search I know.
2) Being able to ask a query (Google search) through the browser address bar, hence Chrome.
3) Chrome - best browser I know (Mac)
These are very heavily counterbalanced by the very close to evil if not evil level of disregard for / productization of private information.
I also am feeling fatigue from how in your face Google is. If they have a dream of stealing eyeballs from Facebook fatigue well, Google is leading the pack on fatigue - being sold, being networked, etc. If they every happen to make a not-evil service that becomes popular for some group of people, it will be axed in a year. So I have stopped looking to Google for solutions and this has cost them a lot of good will / care about what they do in my book. They constantly cut themselves off at the knees and are becoming more microsoftian each year.
If Google would focus on search and making things useful for people (like for example, contextual help and debugging through a knowledge base and context recognizer running on mac/pc/linux/android) they can do well. But their constant failures in the social and product development realm is a serious distraction. Google needs to reevaluate if they want to be seen as relevant. They don't actually have anything except the ad and phone business that seems worth their billions of cap.
Over the course of this year Googles has shown an quickly diminishing quality in handling how to treat and communicate with it's users:
Maybe someone should teach Larry Page how to find the meaning of "forever." I heard there is a company that specializes in finding web pages about specific topics. I wonder if that could assist in teaching him what forever means. My understanding is forever is a very long time and not just until later the same day another employee decides to announce it will be discontinued.
I refuse to pay for a texting plan you insensitive clod!
More so, why would I when I can do various messaging services from my phone via the data plan I'm already paying for? Anyone who needs to contact me has been taught that if they text me... I will yell and demand they pay me $0.25 per text sent... and that IM (or better yet email) is the best way to catch me.
None the less... you speak like a person who is... 25+? While SMSing used to be all the rage of the cool kids in Jr & Sr high... it later moved to Facebook messaging... and even now to 'other' IM services which are less obvious to parental inspection and even more 'cool'.
Judge not the world you do not understand ye still young'in who thinks they understand the world!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Gtalk is a small light memory demand application. I generally set it up to run whenever a computer boots. A browser is much more memory intensive. To use the Gmail page as a Gtalk client you not only would have to keep the browser running whenever someone else might want to talk to you, but you would have to keep a browser window open on your Gmail page. And aside from the memory demand issue, that could also be a big security issue, particularly if you want to be available from computers that others might get access to, such as from work. I don't log out of my computer every time that I go to get a coffee refill, and don't want to, and sometimes those little trips outside of one's office can turn into multi-hour meetings or firefights. I wouldn't want to get into the habit of leaving my browser logged into my personal mail account (or have to have multiple ones that my friends are expected to search through to find me), it is just too much of a security risk.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Personally there are three products I use and think are important from Google
Ignore the poor use of "Do no evil" without showing evidence of the sucking the blood of virgins, or getting naked people to eat fruit.
The products that I think are important, are Chrome OS - Hell the desktop needs more love, Android for obvious reasons(900 Million activations). I'm not even mentioning maps...or gmail...or youtube...the list just goes on. Hell I actually their most game changing product is actually Google Apps for Business. I am going to ignore the Nexus range/Glass/Q/Driverless Car?. Search and Chrome are now just a small part of what they do.
You need to start paying attention to why Google continues to Grow, While Microsoft shares have been flat for forever, and Apple share have been dropping like a knife.
AIM 7.5 can link your Facebook and Google accounts and show them on the buddy list. Hopefully Google doesn't break the link, it actually works quite well if you like the AIM style interface.
Google fears Microsoft more than it feared Skype.
Google face *competition* from the pack of 4 "Facebook,Apple,Amazon,Netflix" but not Microsoft, Microsoft currently are struggling to compete effectively against Google, and nothing seems to be changing that. Ironically one of the many reasons (the main being its not that good) form Windows Phone spectacular failure is its insistence on skype, something that the carriers despise.
MS has a monopoly on what today?
Desktop...Apps :)
And if that person has (or primarily uses) a house phone, not a cell phone...?
Apparently google is quickly striving to catch up to AOL having not received the walled garden memo some 20 years ago.
Come on google... don't be stuck in the past.. throw away your crufty ole legacy support for POP3, IMAP and acceptance of SMTP messages from the few third party domains who dare not use gmail. It will be great.
It's not actually a generic pejorative though, it's a common pejorative among 13-year olds.
The effect is that using it as an adult makes you sound childish...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I'd never heard of it before this article. I think that's a large, possibly the largest, part of the problem...
People are dicks. Get over it. I've been called a thousand different offensive names in my life. We're all different and it's in our evolutionary behavior to exclude those that seem "Different" in any way we can to keep dominance over the group/tribe whatever... They key is realizing this, and letting the dumb be dumb. Words really can't hurt you, only your own insecurities can.
What's hilarious and ironic is that you here are doing the Exact Same Thing. You've chosen to single out those you feel are insensitive, you've categorized them and you're trying to exclude them. I'm willing to bet that you even have your own pet names for them as well... redneck, teabagger, white trash, bigot. You are as they are, human. If you've found a better way to live your life, then do so. Ridiculing those that don't follow your lead is... well... just as bad as calling them fags. It's just a different made up word meant to make them feel bad and not mate with your wife.
There are advantages of using Google+ which are group video calls; Sending Photos to everyone in your hangout; Start a hangout with the right people (Circle :)
No, the only advantage of Google+ is: It's not facebook.
I've never found a problem sending pictures to people, even groups of people. Why do you feel you need to surrender all your privacy instead of just emailing a photo?
I am in kind of awe at this? I cannot dumb myself down enough to respond.
Or are you just not intelligent enough to respond? While e-mail is not to be considered secure, it's a damn sight more secure than the social-network-flavor-of-the-month. Or do you only use Google's e-mail system and therefore they already know everything about you?
I think it's safe to say that the state of instant messaging is truly fucked right about now.
Google seems to keep making bone-headed moves it thinks will drive people to actually start using its moribund Google+ network; and, like all the past moves, it almost certainly will not work.
I say this somewhat - but not completely - tongue in cheek: Will we see a day when Google decides Android phones can no longer do SMS, because "our new GMS (Google Messaging Service) provides a superior messaging platform through integration with your Google+ circles"?
#DeleteChrome
Wait a second... Are you saying that all the people who don't realize that they themselves are the product sold by FB/G+ are the smart ones?
No I was referring to the fact that the individual, does not understand the fact that just because Hangout exists does not understand why email is suddenly not in existence.
If you think you are *sold* Google+ you are not really smart. Google whatever you think of it makes billions by *selling targetted advertising space* if it sold and user data its business model...and the billions would vanish overnight.
Facebook has different policies...and more worrying unscrupulous partners, who have there own large cashes of data. Without having alternative revenue streams. They are very different beasts.
While e-mail is not to be considered secure...
Let me stop you there...Did email break...cannot there be alternative methods of doing things...what is the difference to the two methods...are there advantages/disadvantages of the the two methods,...should more than one service exist.
People want to share photos...Google+ recently did cool things from autogenerating panoramas, creating animated gifs, auto improving photos, autotagging perhaps sharing through that platform is a good idea, but the reality is you can still use email...that never went away.
What is hilarious is Yahoo and Microsoft and Facebook have all spent big money getting into picture sharing because it is so *big* either acquiring companies for billions.
It is not possible that Google doesn't fear MS. I'd be willing to be that most of the people reading our comments here are doing so from a Windows computer.
I think its the fact that that Android Activations are set to eclipse those of Windows installs this year, and that is without any serious investment in Chrome...or Microsoft replacing a the Windows Desktop...with a windowless on.
But... how many of those are actual users, or just people who created a google account because it's required to activate their phone?
You don't need Google+ to activate your Android Phone...In fact you can use hangouts, by just installing it on your iPhone (rolls eyes)
I've never found a problem sending pictures to people, even groups of people. Why do you feel you need to surrender all your privacy instead of just emailing a photo?
This is something a lot of Slashdotters - especially the "privacy" tinfoil hat crowd, not that I'm saying that includes you - fail to grasp about the popularity of Facebook. The fundamental tradeoff of social networking sites is that you willingly give up some of your privacy - on the information you choose to make public - in exchange for making the information you consume from others less obtrusive.
For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch, or some cause they wanted to support, or some other piece of datum they felt like sharing with the world, it would be chaos. I would blacklist them all from my mailbox to avoid hundreds of spams a day and would only communicate with my very closest friends.
But with Facebook (or Google+ if anyone else I knew actually used it), people can post as much or as little as they like and I can consume that content as much or as little as I like. For you, the experience all depends on how often you want to check your social networking site. Many of my friends are Facebook-obsessed zombies, and they can check and post to FB all day, commenting back and forth all day on each others' cute cat pictures. For me, I check FB every week or so when I'm bored, and it will only show me updates from the friends I correspond with the most - but if I have time to kill and want to see what my freshman year roommate is doing, I can keep reading to see. Or if I'm going to meet a friend I haven't seen in a while, I can skim through their profile to catch up. At any rate, I have a feed of "social" information that I can pay as much or as little attention to as I like, and can easily keep in touch with a much broader range of people than I otherwise would have if I had to restrict the list to just the people I wanted to get regular e-mails from.
"95% of all Slashdot
The thing I most care about is if the "hangout protocol" will be supported by libpurple, preferably by google written code. It would be great if the protocol was open source to ease the implementation.
I don't mind having a variety of IM protocols because it adds fault tolerance, but I want to run only one client. Several clients use libpurple now so it is even resistant to one development team's idea of what is the next best GUI idea.
That's it, I'm just going to go back to talk....not Gtalk, just talk.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
People are dicks. Get over it. I've been called a thousand different offensive names in my life.
Me, too. And it's all water off a duck's back.
Of course, as a heterosexual white protestant male in the US, I'm hardly in a position to judge how any minority group should react to epithets that have historically been used as part of a campaign of oppression against such people.
The "don't be evil" has left the building. Cue evil Googlers to mod this into oblivion.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
At one moment in time, it was a really good way to get a hold of a high school or college kid (nephew, neice, cousin, whatever). Now it's SMS.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Maybe this will give me the motivation to stop channeling my instant messaging through google servers.
Relax, folks. Yes, XMPP may be dropped. But not to go completely closed-specs. According to a Google engineer, Hangout specifications for interoperability will come back, so third party apps can fully support it. XMPP needs to go because it is not extensible enough for the features needed. Besides, Hangout is nased partially on XMPP. More details here: http://juberti.blogspot.com/2011/07/hangouts-mailbag.html
(Hilarious and ironic? Is that a challenge?)
Whoa there, buddy. I'm an innocent witness! I told you something fascinating (IMHO) that I saw happen in 1985 and now you're giving me shit for it?
Fine. Next time someone tells you they're concerned that "hackers" may have influenced their computer, I'll just let you go on thinking that they're bragging about how awesome their computer is. Then we'll see who looks like the insensitive clod.
Later you'll find out, briefly wonder why Sloppy didn't tell you about the new meaning of "hacker," and then you'll remember this day. You'll come crawling back, on your hands and knees, offering to do to all sorts of gay things to earn my forgiveness.
Genie's out of the bottle. You can whine and bitch it all you want about how stupid it might be, but "gay" has at least three meanings now, and some hipster (THERE! Now you can accuse me of labeling people) will come along and explain "gay" is up to five meanings now. And maybe then I'll join your side, saying, "Enough. I don't want to know."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Not to hijack this rant, but that's one of the problems with Google Talk: words have meanings. For instance:
* talk
* voice
* chat
See how someone might get a little confused by what "Google Talk" is? They've got a branding problem with the product, because many people still don't know what it is (as a product). Remember, we're talking about a population who probably, by and large, just thinks that a pop-up with a friend sending them a message in their email is just another email interface.
Now ask yourselves, do you think "What do you mean you've got to put this @jabber.org email address at the end of your hangout to talk?" would go over well? I've heard people (younger people, granted) communicate with each other and say "what's your gmail address?" and they just share the prefix in return. Many of these people don't seem to realize there is anything out there aside from gmail for mail, or that gmail is in no way exclusive. For younger people, it's all there has been for as long as they remember. (People who were 8 when Google came out are now 18...)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
And we're *still* fighting *chat*wars? Bloody hell. You'd think the big boys would have found something better by now.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Your expletive-laden post makes clear your generally a-social tendencies. You have a small circle of close friends and F--- everybody else.
Fine. But don't think you are the majority.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
And you think sending thru some app is private?
You poor delusional soul?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I might well have been naive, but I was shocked to find out, maybe somewhen in the Seventies, that "gay" referred to homosexuality. Ere then I'd thought it was among synonyms for "happy". Keeping up with shifts in language is not always trivial.
The IM world is dropping compatibility like flies. What are these companies trying to do?
They're trying to get you to use a client that they can show advertisements on. If you use a client that doesn't provide an ROI for them, why would they want offer up their electricity, spinning disks and the bandwidth of their service to you?
Meanwhile, IRC works just fine... and is supported by Pidgin from what I can recall.
Pretty soon they'll drop HTML support
One word. "Apps."
* Google Wave: RIP August 2010
* Google Code Search: RIP January 15, 2012
* Google Reader: RIP March 13, 2013
* Google Talk: RIP ?
Action speak louder than words..
I would think that having access to real-time presence information (at keys versus not at keys), status messages, and personal communication would be a marketing winner for Google. All of this is information that can be used to direct targeted ads to you contextually, anywhere on the internet. There's no need to present ads in the client itself for the service to have a good ROI.
At our school, we don't earn a degree when we graduate—we earn pi/180 radians
I'm using Google Talk with a 3rd party client (Miranda) - configured to connect using my gmail.com account to talk.google.com using a Jabber connection - to talk to friends that are using web interface at gmail.com. Is that going to stop working? (it does work at the moment)
I think it's safe to say that the state of instant messaging is truly fucked right about now.
Google seems to keep making bone-headed moves it thinks will drive people to actually start using its moribund Google+ network; and, like all the past moves, it almost certainly will not work.
I say this somewhat - but not completely - tongue in cheek: Will we see a day when Google decides Android phones can no longer do SMS, because "our new GMS (Google Messaging Service) provides a superior messaging platform through integration with your Google+ circles"?
I wouldn't be surprised... Hangouts will eventually integrate SMS too.
I have a 13 year old ICQ account.. still works great. Same as 13 years ago.
Not very popular with 'common people' though, but I noticed.. nothing except facebook on desktop and line/whatsapp on mobile for chat, is very popular with common people.
It's only fucked if you want to stay independent of a social network. Everyone I know is on facebook, so I use their XMPP system.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
somewhen in the Seventies... Ere then I'd thought it was among synonyms for "happy".
Well, that's what happens when you get frozen in the 1800s and wake up in the 70s ;)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
not unlike TV.
Sorry the product is the service, and your right its exactly like the a TV *show*, they *sell* advertising space(the product) in that service. Everybody know it, You don't pay in any sort of form, if you did you did the government would tax you on it. In fact you are the *consumer*. Its why google apps for buisness is now a paid service :) they dimply *monetise* the product in a different way...like buying a DVD.
Question: you need to have a google+ account (as all google accounts are google+ accounts) to activate an android device with google.
NO that is not true
For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch, or some cause they wanted to support, or some other piece of datum they felt like sharing with the world, it would be chaos. I would blacklist them all from my mailbox to avoid hundreds of spams a day and would only communicate with my very closest friends.
This demonstrates a concept I have always thought correct:
communication barriers are good, they filter out bullshit. Just like everything you listed in the above example.
2010 called, they want their post back. Google+ is second only to Facebook in active users, it's not moribound by any stretch of the imagination. Though you could be forgiven for thinking that if you're not using it (as unlike e.g. Twitter and YouTube, it's not so visible from the outside, by design).
They don't want to force people to Google+. They want to prevent skype from using the google talk address book without offering its own in return.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Oh, and how did it become a "generic pejorative"? From bigoted thugs, calling out details of one's personal appearance as evidence that they were gay, and therefore should be beaten.
That's my memory of high school in the late 80s. And college in the 90s. And, come to think of it, some incidents I've seen in the last month.
I have no use for an instant messaging system that I can't use from dedicated third party instant messaging software.
Ironically, it seems the only remaining large XMPP provider is Facebook.
tuppe666 is posting nearly 10% of responses on defending Google, telling you're not getting paid! cha-ching
People who are paid, are incredibly easy to spot. The purpose is not to argue, or discuss...flame or win...spell correctly and don't swear. Its to convince *the Public* that your product is better...mainly by criticising the other. You expect phrases showing how often you use it "As a long time X User" or "I Use X everyday" "convinced others to use it"(the shame) Then you go on with with your you tried hard to like it and "you are reaching the end"/ "Just lately I have struggled" "Its my third version" then there is the vague nondescript complaint like its "slow" "buggy" "crashes all the time" "privacy" and my personal favourite "incompatible" and then the money shot *THE GUILTY CONFESSION* "I have notice how nice X it on a friends computer" "I have tried X out on a trial(seriously kill me) machine" "I borrowed X for a while"...and you don't actually switch because of some personality quirk defect "your too old" "fanatical about" or your a "geek"/"nerd" depending on your audience or a more brave "It does not work anymore" without providing proof or solid evidence...you can even spot them in this thread.
So after removing my MSN account from Pidgin, I can now remove my Google Talk account? Great, so only a private Jabber server remains. Unless I'm willing to have 3 separate IM clients running ... Bah. Anyone knows of a universal Linux client that can handle at least skype and jabber?
For example: I use Facebook and have accumulated around 200+ friends, ranging from best friends to interesting people I met at a conference or my child's preschool. If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch,
Why would someone you met at a conference send you a picture of their lunch?
The tradeoff with facebook is not what you think it is. It's not about making the content you consume from others less obtrusive, it removes the burden to them of figuring out who to share things with.
In other words, I'm saying life is not better when someone posts every piece of crap online without thinking and relies on their "friends" to sort out what they want to see.
To me, anyone who does, is saying they are too lazy to even think about who they want to communicate with.
That interesting person from the conference, if he was required to think about it, would never decide to send you photos of his lunch in the first place. So the burden of deciding whether or not to see it has been shifted off him entirely and onto you.
*stratches head*
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Hey, that's my signature! ;)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Well, ICQ still works. I've used it since 1999 and don't intend to move anytime soon.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Fuck rights, you both have the responsibility to learn to act in a way that doesn't offend either of you, because if you're causing offense, you've failed to communicate properly. Be conservative in what you do and liberal in what you expect from others.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
keep doing this google... and you will learn the hard way!
google keep axing service and features, they only work by statistics (what 90% of the people use stays, what doesnt reach that level is set to die... unless is related to google+)
If they keep stripping their services and removing things, even if is little used, make their service dull and boring and other service for other entities with shiny features look a lot more attractive.
They are not removing dead or broken features, they are removing things people use and like... even if its just 5% of the people, that is still millions of (soon unhappy) users
google should know this, a service looks better when it have interesting features, even if little used! that is what makes people happy when the "search result is somewhat the same" compares with other services. XMPP talk, google reader, calendar caldav, block sites in search results, even the google cache are disappearing, along with other features... and what we will have in the end? another altavista? plain search, full of spam? a webmail like hotmail? instead of being number one, they are becoming just one more... and not because the others are getting better, google is getting worst.
at least cached version of search results was put back (still very hidden, but better than nothing). google was "forced" to put it back, the due users complains.. probably from internal users, as outside users are just ignored.
finally, with google axing things, people trust less and less in the google "cloud", as a feature/service today might be a lost feature tomorrow and a problem to be solved.
So every time google axes one service or feature, is putting just one more nail in its coffin.
i personally avoid being logged in google services, refuse to join google+ and started to also use other search engines too. If google keep worsening their service, it is easier to migrate to other services this way.
Higuita
If each one of those people e-mailed me every time they had a photo to share of their lunch, or some cause they wanted to support, or some other piece of datum they felt like sharing with the world, it would be chaos.
If people I knew started e-mailing me pictures of their cats I'd be most obliged to redirect their mail to /dev/null. However, if people ran their own website or blog or whatever I would happily subscribe to their RSS feed and ignore the junk I didn't care about. And the best part of it is that there's no middle man, making money from it, datamining it, or whatever.
None of the features facebook/Google+/whatever offers wasn't available before all of this "social networking" craze took hold. Somehow I was able to attend BBQs, see pictures from people's holidays (and cats), discuss stuff that mattered to groups of people (and with less inane bullshit in between on how the kids just puked on the carpet, including a video on youtube). Somehow people seemed to be more aware of the fact that when they put things on a website it's there for the world at large to see, but instead now we get people complaining "My privacy options".
I get the feeling eternal september got upped to a whole new level, where "Me too" has been replaced with +1 or "Like".
If you look to both lists, you don't see many things that people miss or thing its useful! they are just obsolete or dead software/services
with google list, you see several useful things, with still many users... just not enough for google to care (or hard to merged to google+)
Higuita
I'm starting to believe that I should cancel everything I have on/with Google and move it home.
I use(d) Google Talk a lot. I use(d) Google Reader a lot, especially the sharing feature.
I don't use Google Mail a lot, but I'll move that home as well now.
I never used Google Office (whatever it's called), but now I never will. Seriously.
And I think I'll try to switch search engine. Any tips? (Might as well get used to the search engine going away as well.)
Are there any talk-solutions I can take home?
Distributed, like mail? That I can get my friends to run?
If not, are there any talk solutions that doesn't seem to die the corporate death?
My default right now would be MSN, and I'm not too happy about that (and it probably has a limited lifespan as well, with Skype and all).
Go back to IRC like a boss. Be real again, stop drinking the coolaid and think for yourself.
What I haven't seen discussed is the effects of this decision on Google Apps users, in other words, (paying!) business users. With Google shuttering XMPP federation, you instantly lose the ability to communicate outside your organization (unless your customers/partners are also using google). As federated XMPP is much more heavily used in the business world, this drastically alters the value proposition of using Google Apps since you lose the very interoperability that used to be a selling point.
I'd love to see Google answer that particular question. All "enterprise IM" solutions out there are built on (federated!) XMPP. Even Microsoft's.
This isn't a theoretical question -- My last two employers used federated XMPP to communicate, both internally and with external clients/vendors.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
None of the features facebook/Google+/whatever offers wasn't available before all of this "social networking" craze took hold. Somehow I was able to attend BBQs, see pictures from people's holidays (and cats), discuss stuff that mattered to groups of people (and with less inane bullshit in between on how the kids just puked on the carpet, including a video on youtube). Somehow people seemed to be more aware of the fact that when they put things on a website it's there for the world at large to see, but instead now we get people complaining "My privacy options". I get the feeling eternal september got upped to a whole new level, where "Me too" has been replaced with +1 or "Like".
This is about the wisest thing I've seen written about the subject in a while, but your comment about Eternal September betrays your age/generation and I think this is a generational thing. I was generally into Google until recently, but I notice a trend of them removing or deprecating open protocols in favor of new closed protocols or services that don't interoperate. Maybe that's how you make money in this round of "Internet Monopoly Game" but it means I'll be using Google less. I'm already forced to have an account for use with the Play store, but otherwise I've paid for alternatives:
But constantly having to avoid the quicksand in this ever-changing map of traps is quickly becoming a hassle.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Google+ is second only to Facebook in active users
And Google+ is second to no one when it comes to counting incidental users as active ones! I have an "active" Google+ account attached to my work e-mail address now, because someone I do work with invited me to a Hangout once. People can't stay on the edge of Google's infrastructure for very long now before being likely to have a + account.
Perhaps this is so in the circles you frequent, when you're outside the house; but I can assure you there are many places and times where "most people" definitely do not speak that way.
Communication is a skill; optimal communication is an art. Overuse of superlatives or expletives shows a lack of both skill and artistry. These words are intended for extreme emphasis, not merely for vocal punctuation. Using language badly might help you blend with a poorly educated peer group (and perhaps that is a valid goal in your circumstances - rich rappers are said to "dumb down" their speech purposely, and at least one US President famously spoke quite differently in private than in speeches) but it will never gain you more than that.
You arn't, and that is not how active members are measured
It's possible that other services aren't willing to invade your personal communications for the purpose of monetization, like Google is.
This is getting ridiculous. I already use trillian because I'm sick of the balkanization of chat. I don't see why I need to load 50 different programs just to chat with different people. Now we're moving to systems where we can't even use 3rd party consolidators?
I don't care if they want to 'reinvent communication'. There are very excellent use cases for having plain old text chat, and they arn't going to go away just because Google wants to stick their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalala". And there are plenty of other chat systems that don't (yet) pull this crap.
SMS has one big advantage that all of these proprietary im services lack (and google seem to be moving away from)...
It's actually an interoperable standard. I can use any handset with a multitude of operators, or i can use many third party online sms gateways. Regardless of the client or provider i choose, i can still talk to all other users of SMS, and i don't need multiple different accounts and/or devices to talk to different people.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
One of the weaker Star Trek episodes, IMHO, but I gotta admit: it's memorable.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Because IM federation is really no different to email, and they're happy to offer that.
They don't offer the service to you, you simply communicate with someone else who is using their service.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
What can I say? I like somewhen for its aptness, and find ere useful. Just because some words have fallen into general disuse doesn't mean they've lost their utility - to me, anyway. 'Sides, "ere" saves ink. Or electrons, or whatever. [grin] I'm old enough and stupid enough to enjoy a bit of play with the language.
Spamfiltering, would allow you to safely check mail "when you have time to kill".
Alas, choosing Facebook means no spam filter will ever be available.
Indeed, I buy your 'less obstrusive' argument -that's the first one I find in favor of FB.
But, I fear it's an answer for the lazy ones: setting up a good spamfilter was long, involving training etc. Setting up FB is faster.
And because it is faster, and almost all young adopters are lazy, FB will *undoubtedly* destroy the idea of spam filter itself. A bit like Google groups destroyed Usenet.
Now why do I feel so old...
Herve S.
Gay is not a generic pejorative. It is a slur used to disenfranchise a minority group that is commonly vilified, discriminated and targeted against. It was used as a generic pejorative when you were in grade school because discriminating against the "gays" was actively encouraged. But now we've decided that discriminating against minority groups based on hate is in pretty bad taste.
I can understand a 12 year old not fully understanding the words that they are using and needing to be brought aside and possibly punished to teach them the consequences of their words. I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that you are older than 12 and probably quite a bit older. Most people would expect you to know better.
Society. It's like tech skills. Keep up or go extinct.
Just to nitpick - if my goal was to offend, and I'm causing offense with my words, then I daresay that I am indeed communicating properly.
Which isn't to say I condone the use of certain words, but neither do I condemn. A person should be aware of the effect their words are likely to have, and be willing to deal with the consequences.
On the other side of that argument, I think that going through life being concerned with what other people think or are going to think of you, whether it's because of your diction, your manner of dress, or anything else, is a cowardly way to approach life.
SNFOTM has a nice ring to it.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
n/t
There are some serious privacy concerns with Google+, and a lot of people smart enough to avoid the whole Facebook clusterfuck are not at all keen to surrender to Google even if Google appears to be somewhat more responsible with your data.
Only by people that don't understand that you can have a G+ account without filling out a profile or using the social stream stuff. There's no privacy concerns with having a G+ account - if you don't want to give Google your information, then don't. But you can still have a G+ account to use all the latest toys. And you can share G+ photo albums with people that aren't on G+, the old Picasa "unlisted" albums still exist and still work with G+ albums. You can still create them, and you can still share them. Only it's even easier to do so now, as you just hit "Share" on a G+ photo album and type in an email address.
Really? Because I'm unable to rate or review apps in the Android Market unless I have a Google+ account. This despite the fact that this all worked perfectly fine for years, before Google+ came along.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You don't get to decide when a word is pejorative to a group that's historically been targeted with it.
FYI - it was a word adopted by the homosexual community (circa 1960's and 1970's) to try to replace the term "queer", and to convey a certain message in the process. Over time, though, it has come to be a synonym for "queer" instead.
Just goes to show that one can call something anything they like, but the name will eventually mean the same thing as what was originally given it.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I'd be surprised if they were really completely dropping it. It probably has more to do with rush to market on latest features than some attempt to slam doors on people's feet. XMPP for voice really is not all that great, I've implemented it myself.
We've supported Googleifyed xmpp jingle in FreeSWITCH [http://www.freeeswitch.org] since 2006. Its never really looked like something that would scale since the signaling protocol was over an already high level transport designed for chat. XMPP offers one really good feature, you can reach users directly using a user@domain.com style address and there is no NAT or any other networking or lookup issues to reach that user. The downside is it won't scale due to the fact that xmpp servers are heavily rate limited and not designed at all for tons of messaging at heavy rates. So Google luckily had the best super cluster of xmpp services in town and that allowed them to build on that for the voice stuff but I bet it became clear to them quickly the challenges with trying to exponentially keep up.
I would gather more info and look for the whole story before passing judgement. If they have some goal to use some fancy new audio and video services, there is a chance they can focus on that first and make sure it scales and it should be trivial to gateway that back to xmpp for existing topology.
Coming from a telephony background, I am more concerned with the tunnel vision towards paradigm shift at any cost that threatens people who still use telephones from being disenfranchised by this attempt to reinvent communication too drastically too quickly. Balance is key when it comes to legacy vs new wave in communication technology.
My guess is that this is a direct response to Microsoft.
Google has been talking open-ness, and xmpp is part of that. Microsoft decided to connect messenger so that they could send messages to g-chat users, but didn't reciprocate in terms of allowing g-chat users to see messenger contacts. (I don't know the protocol, but I understand this is a valid use of an xmpp server, even if clearly parasitic).
Google have responded by shutting the whole thing down. 'Hey Microsoft -play nice, or we'll take our ball home'
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
This is why we decided not to integrate with any Google services or software. They throw shit over the wall and abandon it. They have a working service and change everything about it. They do this all the time. In fact, ditching XMPP after ten years represents a new dimension along which you can't trust them. Not only can't you trust the new shit to be around longer than 18 months, but now you can't trust anything under, apparently, 10 years stay around either.
Yeah. Integrate with Google's offerings.. I think not.
I won't touch anything that has anything to do with Facebook with a ten-foot pole.
White Privilege and Heterosexual Privilege
They sound immensely racist and misanthropic to me. Oh, you mean there are other countries besides the US filled with impoverished white people who have nothing to do with your politics?
Take a history class and get back to us.
They're already probably getting money by throwing some of my personal information in a blender and using it in some way so that it nets them some kind of profit. If they want me to see ads too and force me into specific programs or to use a web page, well... goodbye, Google Talk.
First thing I installed on Android was xabber. Maybe second, as I tried one or two free XMPP clients more, but stayed with xabber. I haven't used GoogleTalk since. Not sure if I even installed it.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Done. I just earlier did a search for Jabber's web site to get some more information. Had some serious trouble trying to get logged in with Pidgin (some vague "connection errors"... I accidentally used @jabber.com instead of @jabber.net... duh). Once I tried and got logged in with no problem using Kopete, I finally realized the problem and I'm now able to log in with Pidgin too.
I'll see how this goes. The one advantage Google Talk had was that if a person's e-mail address was known, so was their instant messaging username. While Jabber loses that, it is cool that they don't even ask for an e-mail address upfront. This can come in handy, because I know some people are more likely to be afraid of something and more reluctant to try it out if their e-mail address is required from the start.
I'll continue to use my google account for chatting with people for now, but if they pull the plug on 3rd party clients such as bitlbee, I'm done with google. I'll either setup my own jabber server running XMPP, or just switch back completely to IRC.
I can cut a 2013 teacher some slack for disciplining a student for bitching about homework. But I can't cut anyone slack in 2013 for not knowing "gay" is a generic pejorative. If you don't know gay is a generic pejorative by now, then you also probably missed the memo that it means homosexual. You probably think it means "happy."
Words. They're like tech skills. Keep up or be left behind.
Dude, don't be such a nigger about word definitions.
Oh, you didn't know "nigger" means aggressive and hardcore now? Get with the program, words change meaning all the time.
I use google XMPP because it supports OTR. Allowing me to privately chat with others supporting this protocol. Removing XMPP will likely mean that all my chat messages are stored by google. I dont know what googles real intent is here, but it will force me to find a new chat service that supports OTR.
Ive been suspicious about google wanting to get rid of OTR, ever since they installed their own version of "OTR"... which isnt the secure version of OTR at all, but rather an optional client based instruction to not store logs. It really bothered me that Google would select the acroymn OTR for something that is definately not OTR. It seemed that they were trying to create brand confusion and lul average users into a sense of security that did not exist. My theory is that one reason Google is moving away from true XMPP is that they can get rid of all encrypted chat communication and can apply all of their demographic tools on every message we send.
Yeah, going to go ahead and have to say that you're doing something wrong. I've got a lot of complaints about Hangouts text-chat in gmail and android, but the video conferencing is by far the best I have ever used.
Why do you think the above post shows asocial tendencies? I can't see that when I read it. The way I read it, this person is quite social but has high, yet not completely unreasonable standards to their social interactions. Based on what was said, it seems that the AC has friends who are also like minded. What is asocial about that?
The way I understand it, someone who is asocial would avoid all sorts of social interaction, and not just have standards that differ to your own.
I'm just curious about what makes it asocial, because I experience similar tendencies, though I do not require that people meet me in real life. I do maintain a small knit of friends rather than a large one. It is just rare for me to find people who I really connect with, and when I do find such people, I tend to like to spend most of my time with them. Due to that fact, I don't have much time for others, not that I couldn't find something interesting about someone else as well. Everyone is interesting in their own ways -- though there are a few things I can't stand about some people, but that list is pretty short.
Would I be considered asocial as well then? Most of my friends seem to think I am very sociable though. It's not that I don't care about people outside of my small knit, I just can't focus on multiple people one after the other because doing so leaves me feeling tired, and stressed out.