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?
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.
Pretty soon they'll drop HTML support
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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".
... Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts...
I'll buy that if by "active" you mean "someone said I should try it so I signed up and checked it out for an afternoon" or "I was forced to join Google+ to read the messages of a Groups thread someone pointed me to" or "I have a Google+ account? When did that happen? Oh, I guess I accidentally signed me up yesterday!" then sure.
E pluribus unum
...calm down, Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts
Which doesn't mean a whole lot, since having a Google account at all now is basically a Google+ account. Signing up for Youtube means you are an "Active" google+ account.
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.
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.
Actually, I think you're routing your calls through Google Talk even if you make your VoIP calls from within Gmail. If you "Try the new Hangouts" from within Gmail, you'll find that you can no longer make GV calls until you switch back to the old Google Talk interface.
I'm glad to see that Nikhyl Singhal of Google reassuring users that the cutting-off of GV is only temporary, and that it will be integrated with Hangouts/Gmail later: https://plus.google.com/106636280351174936240/posts/DG6h32BWaQW
My bicyles
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.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/bugmenot/
http://www.mailinator.com/ (Use the alternate domains if necessary.)
You're welcome. :)
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
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 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....
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?
Not "hater" (how I wish that PC term would go away) but just a non-user. I have a google account (who doesn't?) but I don't remember the last time I logged into Google+. Everyone I know is elsewhere. Friends have a G+ account, but they never go there, which kinda defeats the purpose.
That's not "hating", that's picking up a tool, looking it over, and saying "why do I need this?"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
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.
Hey, don't look at me, my company tried to give me an i-phone, and I gave it back. I have used an android phone for a couple years now. The point of all of this is that I have friends who are... a little obsessive about their privacy or something, and insist on using one of the alternates instead of gtalk. It'll be interesting to see what they do. Actually, it'll be more interesting to see what *I* do. I'm looking for an alternate to ... what was the name changing to again? As I type.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
Pretty soon they'll drop HTML support
One word. "Apps."
I got an "active" google+ account.
why? google played me. by "upgrading" my youtube account attached to gmail. that's right, pressed "yeah blabla use the realname" and *boom* I'm an "active" google+ user. it didn't make it clear. up until that point I had been able to avoid my gmail account from being turned into a g+ account. with extra effort.
so the google+ userbase that they publicly tout is pretty much the number of gmail and youtube accounts in use.
yeah, so to re-iterate: google+ account numbers are bullshit and inflated because some google execs had a bonus tied to how big they can make the number. has nothing to do with actual active users who are using google+ services. just today they activated hangouts for me - without asking - by changing talk to hangouts on my gmail account. so now I'm "in google hangout" and they'll claim me as a successful user recruitment. such bullshit.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Hangouts. And yes, it would be forgotten pretty quickly if you could call your hangouts contacts on skype, but not your skype contacts on hangouts. Which is exactly how Microsoft used Google's XMPP support.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
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.
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.
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".
Strange how it asked me to make one or attach to an existing account every time I activated one. Must be hallucinations.
Your 3rd party client will keep working fine. I can't believe Slashdot is actually using an article written by a Microsoft shill as a source.
Google is ending XMPP federation support, which means that 3rd party XMPP servers will not be able to communicate with Hangouts users. This is NOT the same as dropping client support. XMPP clients will, at least for the foreseeable future, still be able to connect.
There's no guarantee that Google won't drop XMPP client support in the future, of course, but that's not what the current news is about at all.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)