Google Talk Claims Openness, Lacks S2S Support

rm writes "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget quite well sums up the disappointment in Google Talk among many Jabber users, caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support: '...Google has uncharacteristically missed the real strength of the Jabber design. Despite all their self-congratulation about open communications they've only embraced the smaller, less important aspect of the Jabber openness.'"

Central Me

Select Quotes FTA...

When do we get to the "rant" part? This is boring.

It was a nice trip down memory lane, so don't knock yourself about it. I have fond memories of ICQ with buddies on Captured.com, planetquake.com and late nite mapping sessions with the UH-OH echoing into my brain. And then there was that dreaded song -- you know what I'm talking about. ICQ invaded MTV. Ack -- **flips channel**.

What makes Jabber truly great is that it is a decentralized system.

You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central. They may have a bottom line to think about, yet we are not in business as free-thinking human beings to serve the needs of one company. What we tend to want always comes first, we are all very selfish -- centralized and independant. We do not want to give control to anyone. We want to save it for ourselves, because we have learned from our mistakes and we know what happens when you trust something far bigger than you.

We want to be free, open, decentralized.

But at Google, it's all about centralization. That's their way. The information they have access to at any given moment is insane, and I think it's the primary reason they believe so strongly in centralization, so that they can collect more information.

It's time to embrace a truly workable and distributed topology that will move us past these ridiculous incompatibilities.

I concur.

Re:Central Me

You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central.

All he is suggesting is that they implement the same openness for IM that Google did for webmail. Right now, Google Talk is analogous to a version of GMail that only allowed users to send email to other GMail users. He is not asking Google to be any less centralised with Google Talk than they already are with GMail.

Until I RTFA I didn't realise that inter-server communication was the really useful thing about Jabber. It looks like Google didn't either.

Re:Central Me

Yes google did realize this. If Jabber wants to bein S2S with GTalk, they should e-mail [e-mail]. You could start your own jabber server and go S2S with Google. They fully support it and they know its strengths, they haven't implemented it yet because a) They have their own issues with just releasing a new service, b) they are treading carefully and looking for solutions to "spim", i.e. They are Google, they can't just open up their IM service to every "Joe" in town, it'd be akin to an open proxy for spam. They are doing this right, let them be. The last thing we need are bayesian filters for IM.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Central Me

In general IM via Jabber is a permissions based system. You can grant very fine grain permissions using the standards set forth in XMPP. It's pretty easy to discard messages from anyone not on your jabber roster, and this can be done taken care of server side to cut down on the traffic. With an IM application, you are in the unique position that making this the default behavior will not cause problems for people.

Their 'federation' concept is completely bogus too. I really don't expect them to let my small 22 person jabber server 'federate' with them, and why should I jump through hoops to support Google talk users?

What's worse about it is that although jabber supports transports, I really doubt that anyone is going to bother to write a jabber-to-jabber transport to support Google Talk -- because anyone who would be capable of authoring such a transport is likely to be incredibly peeved about the lack of proper s2s support.

Re:Central Me

Until I RTFA I didn't realise that inter-server communication was the really useful thing about Jabber.

I never thought of it as the useful thing, but definitely high up on the list. I consider it almost exactly analogous to the SMTP server network. You get all the advantages of a private intraoffice server if you want, but also have the ability to send messages to other networks without having to create accounts on those networks: just route a message to the appropriate server and let it do the right thing.

Put another way, I don't see Google's (currently-)closed server as an improvement over AIM or MSN. I'd have to get all my friends to use it and set up Yet Another Buddy List (or another set of contacts to add to the Kopete metacontacts I've already defined). I can't just add [e-mail] to my current Jabber roster and be done with it.

Here's to hoping that they open it up. Until then, it's just another account taking up space in my IM client.

Re:Central Me

Well, from the FAQ on Google talk page you can read: [google.com]

"4. What other communication services will you federate with?
We look forward to federating with any service provider who shares our belief in enabling user choice and open communications. We do believe, however, that it is important to balance openness with ensuring that we maintain a safe and reliable service that protects user privacy and blocks spam and other abuses."

They will be open, but in a slow way and only if your server can be trusted!

Re:Central Me

Why is Google offering a Google talk system? It currently serves no ads, and being client agnostic, will likely be a long time before it does serve ads consistently.

It does not need to serve ads to be useful. Google excel at word and verbal pattern recognition. When I use Gmail I get an email relevent to the email I'm reading in isolation, but not very relevent to me in the broad interaction of interests I have. The more Google know about me the more they can tailor an ad to me as a person, not me as an isolated communication thread: knowing what I casually chat about is a great leap forward - this could also be true in monitoring your interaction with stories via Google's RSS based personalised homepages. It's like Yahoo tried to be but actualy done so the user enjoys it instead of being expected to endure it.

For example, I may have a daily news bulletin email about hedge funds, at the moment I get some really quite poor hedge fund/IFA adverts in these. I also have IMs about asymetric returns of financial markets with friends that research these things. If I got an ad about a hedge fund company that offered a service in relation to asymetric returns (because Google could tie up my interests - the all important interaction effect), or a data provider offering reaearch quality data, I'd be very keen to click on the ad (and possibly follow up the service). Thus Google make several fold the revenue they would do had they not monitored my IM.

Re:Central Me

> You can't really make any money in a decentralized system,
> which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because
> they have always been quite central.

Ah, but you can provide a for-profit service through a decentralised network.

Imagine this: Google runs their IM network on the open XMPP/Jabber standard, and builds SIP based VoIP into their client (they say on their dev page that SIP is coming). Both are open standards and as such will be integrated into many clients and Jabber server implementations.

Jabber supports gateways onto other IM networks, but that isn't the full extent of gateways. Google build a VoIP -> PSTN gateway (say voip.talk.google.com) that allows all these new clients with integrated SIP VoIP to dial out to the old PSTN network for a cost.

What a lot of people don't realise about Jabber is that you aren't limited to using the gateways on your own Jabber server, so if Google then throws open S2S connections on their Jabber server [e-mail] can access the Google VoIP->PSTN gateway and dial his parents (provided he has signed up with Google VoIP and has enough credit in his account) phone.

Google has been buying up a lot of Dark Fibre lately and could seriously undercut their rivals. No more need for Skype or other such providers, and normal Jabber users can voice chat without going via Google due to the nice open VoIP standards implemented in all Jabber clients.

You know Slashdots going downhill when...

the article starts with "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget..."

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

Nonsense. When it comes to editorials, there's little difference between an "official" shill/idiot like Dvorak, and a valid opinion from a blogger. In fact, the blogger may tend to make more sense because he's not serving other masters. (Note: This isn't ALWAYS true.) In other words, the editorial should be judged on its content, not necessarily who wrote it.

The problem is that blogging has a stigma attached to it. It's seen as a method through which people can voluntarily make their private lives public, making it the oddest form of online voyuerism available. However, the concept of publishing articles on a regular basis is not new, and there is no real division made between "blogging" and "writing regular articles". Thus it can be difficult to tell if a "blog" is actually something that can be safely ignored as a poor form of entertainment, or a reasonable attempt at serious writing.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

As I said, it isn't always true that a blogger isn't serving other masters. However, I have a hard time believing that Google is one of them. Google doesn't demand any sort of articles out of a blogger. It's completely up to the blogger what he wants to write about. The most that Google might do to a technologist is cause him to "optimize" his language for adwords.

OTOH, someone might look at the "Top 100 Keyword List" and decide to create a blog on that. If he has something interesting to say about viagra or bankruptcy, then he may very well make money on it. Otherwise this is hardly a workable business plan.

At the end of the day though, you have to judge the article on content. A blogger *may* be better because he's not serving other masters, or he may not. If you judge on the content itself, it really doesn't matter in the end, does it?

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

When it comes to editorials, there's little difference between an "official" shill/idiot like Dvorak, and a valid opinion from a blogger.

Exactly. It's all the same steaming pile of self-important crap.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

"The problem is that blogging has a stigma attached to it."

No, I think the problem is that blogging deserves the stigma attached to it.

Without the ability to identify credible sources (yes, I know it is sometimes possible with blogs) a piece of information is essentially worthless.

Re:You know Slashdots going downhill when...

I'm curious what attributes you'd expect to see in a "more thoughtful" statement that don't exist in what I wrote.

I assure you, I wrote to be read and I spent quite a bit of time attempting to make a point via a coherent argument. Perhaps I failed at that endeavor, but judging from the bulk of the feedback I've gotten it looks like I succeeded on at least some level.

In any event, in that you've not chosen to read the article this thread is beyond a doubt an even greater waste of everybody's time.

When?

"Despite all their self-congratulation about open communications" I don't remember hearing about this, last I heard they simply mentioned that they were using an open protocol to support run their service. Google is a company, people, it runs off money, not fanaticism. They don't have to do all the other things that the open source geeks do, that's not important, they use the piece of the code that's useful for them.

That is, after all, the point of open source, is it not?

Re:When?

From the google talk About page [google.com]

1. What is "service choice" and how does Google Talk enable it?

Service choice is something you have with email and, for the most part, with your regular phone service today. This means that regardless of whom you choose as your email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, your school or ISP, etc), you can email anyone who is using another service provider. The same applies to phone service. You can call someone even if they do not use the same phone company as you do. This allows you to choose your service provider based on other more important factors, such as features, quality of service, and price, while still being able to talk to anyone you want.

Unfortunately, the same is not true with most popular IM and VOIP networks today. If the people you want to talk to are all on different IM/VOIP services, you need to sign up for an account on each service and connect to each service to talk to them.

We plan to partner with other willing service providers to enable federation of our services. This means that a user on one service can communicate with users on another service without needing to sign up for, or sign in with, each service.

and

1. What is "platform choice" and how does Google Talk enable it?

Platform choice means that you can connect to our service using the operating system and device of your choice. Google Talk enables platform choice by letting users of other operating systems connect to the Google Talk service using other IM clients.



I thingk that would qualifies for self-congratulation about open communications enabeling de s2s for talk would enable service coice at least for IM and hey it might still happen I mean it *is* still in beta

Early days

Surely it's too early to be slating what they're doing with this technology. Don't you think they might be taking an incremental approach?

Then again, I *do* sound like another Google apologist, don't I?

Re:Early days

Surely it's too early to be slating what they're doing with this technology. Don't you think they might be taking an incremental approach?

Well thats what I would do, test out the scheme in isolation, then allow for peering.

The big problem in the IM world is how to establish an open system without getting spammed. I don't think that Google will have missed the fact that their product is way behind the established networks. It is in Google's interest to be open here.

Re:Early days

This is exactly what they *are* doing. Read this [google.com]. If you run a jabber server and want to S2S with them, email [e-mail]. If people just read before posting blogs on livejournal and then slashdot, they wouldn't look so fullish. As I said in another post, Google is taking this slowly because by just opening their Jabber server to other Jabber servers would put them in a world of hurt with "Spim", itd akin to an open proxy for spam. People need to read, and let Google take their time. They didn't lock us into using just their client, because jabber supports many clients, what makes you think they'll lock us into using just their network when jabber supports many more. People jump to radical conclusions. Google Talk was slightly disappointing in that it didn't even have file tranfers, but as far as openness goes, Google is doing everything right. Now after Google gets this service settled in after a few weeks, and they start S2Sing with others, people are going to say things like "Google never would have done that if we didn't make a huge fuss and get it on /. , Google has become evil, Wah Wah Wah, we need to force them to do anything good now so whenever they do something we think is bad, make sure to blog about it." This article is just about as ridiculous as the one the other day about a parrallel Googlenet.
Regards,
Steve

"Open"

A truly open system would not require YET ANOTHER FREAKIN' EMAIL ADDRESS. I have like seven email addresses, although I use only one. The rest are needed for IM services.

Google Talk will not be successful until Google management realize this.

Re:"Open"

In that case you may want to try MSN. It allows non-hotmail e-mail addresses (in fact, it allowed invalid e-mail addresses, or at least did back in 2000).

Google+Jabber=?

I thought google was out to "organise the worlds information" Froogle? Yes! Maps? Yes! Gmail? Mabye. But Jabber?!?

Really disappointing

caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support

I tried to explain to my 15-year-old niece how she shouldn't use Google Talk because of its lack of support for XMPP server-to-server communication. Then she discovered some new emoticons and stopped paying attention to me.

Re:Really disappointing

I know that i'll be modded down for an unfunny comment to your witty remark... but GTalk doesn't even provide emoticons...

Re:Really disappointing

Don't you know anything about internet chat? Your 15 year old niece is actually a 40 year old FBI agent.

give it a few months

give it a few months. google has showed in the past that they rarely do something for no reason. i'm willing to at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they have something bigger planned down the road and that this is just an intro.

Perhaps More to Come

Remember this is still in a very early beta stage. On the developer page [google.com], they claim that they're moving toward interoperability with other networks and fully documenting the custom VOIP protocol they use.

They encourage people to comment in the Google [google.com]
Talk Interoperability Google Group. It seems like they're trying to determine how to balance openness with security, privacy concerns (i.e., avoiding spam). I frankly don't know enough about Jabber, etc. to know if this is BS or not, but it sounds reasonable enough to me.

Re:Perhaps More to Come

Stop it, you're not allowed to bring up important information like that so soon after someone's blog rantings are posted on the /. front page!

Give it time

I'm sure they have something big planned. I doubt they would be using Jabber without planning on using S2S in the future.. The potential for this is HUGE.. Use Google talk and watch Google adds when talking to anybody on any protocol. Why wouldn't they? Remember folks, this is beta software that is only a week old.

I must be honest I am incredibly disappointed with Google talk (as of right now). I'm currently in the process of setting up my own jabber server and I am fairly new to jabber but I really do think that Google talk has a lot more potential..

How is S2S a Strength?

For one thing, when you allow just anyone to run a Jabber server, you're assuming they know HOW to run one and run it securely. Hell, even I run a Jabber server, but there ain't no way that thing is EVER going to be on the net in the open or do S2S with any other servers outside of my close circle of friends who *I KNOW PERSONALLY IN REAL LIFE*. My Jabber server is used by friends and family over OpenVPN. I really don't think anyone in their right mind believes in decentralized stuff unless they're doing something illegal or they're libertarians (who I am not so sure are in their right minds). I like a good top down solution with centralized control because it "just works" and you don't have to worry about weirdo incompatibilities since you define compatibility.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

Have you EVER used e-mail before? Same concept here. Read the article before you trash what you don't understand.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

I used to use e-mail constantly, but the signal to noise ratio is like 1:300 these days.

Same concept here.

Re:How is S2S a Strength?

No, with IM you only receive messages from people you have authorised (your friends). And if you're getting a SNR or 300:1 with them, it's time to find some new friends.

Or maybe

It has been out for a week or so, and we should cut them some slack as they work out the kinks and add new features. GMail lacked a number of things I wanted it to have when it first came out, but Google seems to be slowly adding them with time. Google seems too happy to call things beta for just about forever, but at this stage I think we all should consider it as a real beta and just wait and see

Re:Or maybe

I'm not pointing to downsides really, more at upsides:

• Google Search blew everything away with far better ranking algorithm than anything else, and wasn't a bloated ad-ridden portal
• GMail blew everything away with 1GB of storage and a decent AJAX interface
• Google Maps blew everything away with heavy reliance on AJAX
• other things weren't quite blow-everything away, but were still good:
  • Google DMOZ combined DMOZ with Google's excellent pagerank
  • Google Groups kept the usenet archive from disapearing
  • Google Images may not be wonderful, but google's core competency is searching, so it has a shot at improving competition among image search engines
  • Google News was new and different
  • the Blogger acquisition allowed Blogger to improve some
  • etc etc [wikipedia.org]

Compared to all that, what benefit does Google Talk provide to customers? No, you can't hide behind "they MIGHT improve it"... Why does Google belong in this market? Is there something they're going to make available that makes it a stand-out? Do Google's existing skills make it likely that they can improve the IM market for consumers?

Or is Google entering that market, simply because they're like Microsoft now, and want to enter every market they possibly can, just because?

Excellent

Thank you Slashdot editors, please continue to keep me informed of any breaking news stories from this "LiveJournal" news organization.

If only

If only S2S was the only Jabber feature that Google "left out" when rolling out GTalk... but they also forgot to activate all these standard jabber features

• File transferts
• Offline messages (how the heck did they manage to be that stupid?
• Gateways to MSN, ICQ, Y!M, AIM, IRC ...
• Group chats
• Jabber User Directory and vCards

Re:If only

Given that rather shocking list of missing features, I'm assuming they are writing their own server from scratch and they haven't implemented file transfers yet (given how many ways to do that in Jabber there are I'm not surprised). Maybe S2S support is missing for the same reason?

Last I heard the official Jabber servers were pretty scalable but I'd bet a LOT that they were never designed to be scalable to Google sizes. Google writing their own distributed swarm of servers sounds more likely all the time to me.

Re:If only

I wouldn't be surprised if ejabberd is. I've recently started using Erlang on a project that needs to run on large clusters, and I'm amazed at how difficult it is to write code that doesn't scale well in it.

beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

I'm getting freaking tired of people trashing google everytime they put out a beta!

Yes..it might not be the greatest thing since sliced bread but the POINT of releasing test software is for TESTING and feedback!

It's OK to trash the BETA, but don't mistake that by saying "Well....it sucks gonads. Google failed...I'll never use it again"

Re:beta....Beta...BETA!!!!

Yeah, right, a 'beta'. Is there ANY Google service today which does NOT say 'beta'???

nice FUD piece

I'm pretty sure that if you actually read the google talk FAQ that they mention linking up with other networks in the future but they haven't implemented it yet. But why should we let facts get in the way of a good rant?

It's still beta...

Yes, Google talk is still a beta release. Implementing S2S is a no brainer for Google programmers. I am sure we'll have it the moment we are out of beta. The problem is Google software never seems to leave the beta stage...or takes a looong time to leave the beta stage to put it another way.

Encryption support?

No way I'm going to pass plaintext through Google to be mined and added to my electronic dossier. So unless it has encryption support with verifiably no back door, it's a non-starter for me.

Re:Encryption support?

There still isn't a good protocol for end to end encryption over Jabber. The problem is that you need some way of exchanging keys that can be done over an untrusted network, and such a thing doesn't really exist. I've been pushing for a web-of-trust based approach, and there seems to be some support for it, but it will take a while before it is adopted. In the mean time, there are a few clients which use things like GPG and rely on exchanging keys out-of-band (or use the old GPG JEP which is laughably insecure).

Just an "Open Comment" on Google/Jabber

Something I've noticed with the whole Google talk thing is that even the people I know who are hardcore Linux geeks say "How is this better than AIM?"

I must say this is somewhat surprising... one of the tenets of the greatness of Linux is the openness and freedom to innovate - why does nobody care about the fact that IM has had almost no innovations lately?

Google promoting Jabber could be a great thing, assuming they will enable the server to server support. IM could become more of an open service where people actually CAN innovate, rather than a closed protocol run on some corporation's servers.

So, even if you are afraid of Google becoming powerful, or if you think that IM innovation is dead, I'm willing to carry at least some hope that getting Jabber into wider use could be a big deal in evolving how IM works. Just a thought...

It sounds like S2S is on the way....

Leaders in the jabber community have made it fairly clear [saint-andre.com] that s2s support just hasn't been coded yet. Its on its way.

SPAM control..

I am positive that they are trying to figure out how to control SPAM that would happen if they opened up the S2S portion of their server.

Imagine if this would be done..

Imagine if google would open it's talk.google.com for server-to-server communication with other jabbers around.
..
Y! opens a jabber2yahoo bridge
MSN opens a jabber2msn bridge
AOL opens a jabber2aol bridge
..
Everybody would be happy, except for Y!, MSN and AOL.

Happend before, with Inbox size!

And they could keep their voice algorithms for their use, a hell with them! for a couple of years, until it becomes a standard feature, I can agree with that.
Then they should open this too:D

why not release an osx port?

Why didn't they release an os X port?

Sure, iChat on Tiger supports it, and if you don't have Tiger, you can do Adium, or Fire, but that's not an optional solution for a lot of us. (My parents for example are on a dial-up connection in eastern europe and don't speak english.)

Was it so hard to design a client for OS X?

Me too

Hey, I blogged [dystopics.dump.be] something about Google Talk too. Can I be on the slashdot frontpage now? *end sarcasm*

I beat him to it.

My rant about the lack of s2s and transports was posted on the 24th.
Granted his is about 20x longer than mine. [robsell.com]
He could've started writing his the same time as me and just finished it 2 days later...

The Emperor Has No Clothes

I'm sorry, but I'm going to rant just a bit because I've found many things Google has done to be incomplete. Like another company we so enthusiastically bash for putting out products that take several iterations before even getting close to the feature set first anticipated, I've seen this with Google. For instance, gmail doesn't handle HTML email, to name 1 of a number of shortcomings when compared to other rival online offerings. I'd like to see them solidify and expand on such basics, but they seem to always be partially implementing something else to expand the overall base of subset-implemented apps. I know, I know...I'm a heretic, so let the flaming begin...

Biggest missing feature everyone seems to miss

Where the *hell* are the typewriter key sounds?

How do I know I'm actually typing anything without it? :-)

-chargen

Speaking as a layman...

I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I personally am not interested in the voice chat aspect of Google's client, nor am I interested in building an IM "platform." When I use IM, I just want to send messages back and forth to someone, and as long as the service itself is adequate, as most are, for me it comes down to the client itself. With all that said, these days I am still running AIM 4.3 on my Windows machine because it's the least annoying (doesn't ask you to put in a zip code, has no "AIM Today" Window). I'd been using gaim on Windows for a while, but it seemed to add ~30 seconds to my system boot time (I think it installs gtk or something to run) which I found annoying, so after my last format I didn't bother with it. So far I've found Google's IM client (which, I realize, is still "Beta") pretty lackluster. While it's got a clean interface, I find even an aging version of AIM like 4.3 to be more friendly, and it has what I absolutely require: timestamps in the chat. I absolutely will not use an IM client that doesn't show timestamps for all events. This is a relatively simple thing to add, so I imagine it will be added as an option in a future version, but for now it's a showstopper for me. All in all, I don't see what the hype was about, it's Just Another Jabber Client. Voice chat? Whoopee...

Wait a tick...

You mean a beta service is not feature complete? Stop the presses. Or something.

Get a GRIP, people...

Duh

This is the bloody first thing I tried when I connected to google talk. Running a jabberd in S2S mode is not a /requirement/ of a jabberd *AT ALL* As his edited article admits that he knows that not all jabberds need nor require S2S functionality. In fact has he even RTFM'd the jabberd's manual at all *sigh*. Nugget? F*ck Nugget more like! Seriously, someone with a decent CV really needs to lay off the caffine pills before they end up talking as much sh*t as rms about gnu-everything. (rant over)

When they (google) actually went to press they specifically stated that the DNS SRV records were not active - which allows discovery of the host running the jabberd for that domain.

I don't see the reason for sensationalist claptrap for a beta service, hell do you REALLY want to support voice comms to [e-mail] when you're *starting* to roll out a project?

Patience you fools patience

Everyone come down out of their ivory towers and quit trumpeting how great they are for pointing out yet another reason why Google ain't the bees knees. Climb down out of your ivory towers and take a nice dose of reality.

Incremental improvements are a good thing - Starting w/ the absolute minimum feature set and building on it, all along making sure it works as advertised is a sound strategy. This approach allows you to continuously improve the software, and focus on addressing the issues that arise with the current feature set in a manageable way instead of having to address a mass of problems from all of the half-assed features you had to squeeze in because you had to have all of the bells, whistles, and even legit features. A frequent improvement/release cycle is a common practice for open source software products and Google is adopting a similar approach for its service.

You can't simulate this kind of load accurately - Sure you can run computer models of how the traffic load will behave and how the infrastructure will handle it, but you really don't know how it's going to work until you start putting some real user load on the system. By limiting the feature set, and in particular limiting inter-server communications you naturally limit the amount of load on the system. The users aren't going to switch completely from their current service to GTalk all in one day... so as traffic builds they can adjust the service settings, tweak the servers, do whatever to make sure they can continue to provide a quality service. And back to point #1... once you have a good understanding of the traffic patterns and capacity you can begin introducing new features that may change those patterns in a controlled way.

You can't predict how people will abuse the system - By limiting the feature set Google can better ensure that the system is not seriously abused by individuals who would want to use the system in a way that would annoy/harm the general user population or impact system performance. Connecting to other servers is a risky proposition that deserves careful attention and control to ensure that it works correctly. If Google make a misstep here and allows spammers to spam all of their users, and virii to spread across their system, and poorly managed Jabber servers to cause their messages to not reach their intended destinations you'll have a system that most people wouldn't want to trouble themselves with using. Google can start by controlling the environment while providing a base set of services... and then expand in a way that they can monitor and control to ensure that service is not impacted.

Get real feedback from real users - Instead of dreaming up a hundred things users probably want and squabbling over them internally, why not just release a base product that people will use and get direct feedback from them on what they want. This is what Google has setup... now they can ask their users do you want to jabber w/ other non-GTalk servers? Do you want more emoticons? What about real voice call capabilities? What about being able to search your conversations? What about... The point is let the users help direct the next round of development instead of spending a lot of time developing features for people who don't use the product.

Protect the service the customers want - The underlying principle behind all of this is that you have customers who want a service. The way to attract and keep those customers is by offering them a service they want and that works. Google has started by offering GTalk to a group of users. They'll hone the system, make sure it works, and if it meets their objectives and draws in customers they'll continue to expand on it's feature set in a way that keeps their customers from moving to some other service and continues to attract other customers... all the while being very careful not to make the service unstable or give something to their customers only to have to take it away (premature release of poorly test

Could be a security issue

I don't claim to understand the whole Jabber protocol, but it seems to me that having decentralized servers might be a security problem, and be a disadvantage when everyone and their brother can throw together a jabber server.

Once Google allows the other servers to be used with it's own service, it's giving them legitimacy. That's something that people should be careful with. It would be cool if there was some kind of verification system with the server operators, say something similar to personal SSL key verification that people like Thawte were doing before being aquired by Verisign.

There's also the issue of everyone using google's server's as the nexus of the entire jabber network if google started working with other jabber servers.

Two Words

Beta...

BETA!

There's more to IM than chat between people

I'd expect an information company like Google to be interested in the information delivery aspect of IM over it's interperson communications capabilities.
IM is a combination email-webbrowser that can deliver information between clients (like email) on request (like a browser). Will google offer IM-bots to deliver content? Seems reasonable to me.
Also, offline IM is email! In fact, I log all my IM conversations to my mail folders so that they are searchable along with my other main form of communication, email. What I've never understood is why email and IM aren't the same application. I think (hope) Google is taking us there.

I understand why...

One reason for Google to use Jabber technology but not to join their server network is simple: Google wants to spam people with their own advertising targeted by message content. That could be hardly acceptable by original jabber network community.

Too Early to Speculate

Well, I'll be the 50th person to comment that it is a bit too soon (less than a week isn't it?) to criticize them for not having S2S support when they plainly state that that is one of their primary goals. DUH. Clearly they are not finished yet.

As to the article, which was far too long for the amount of actual information it contained, there were no revelations in it other than that which would be dictated by common sense. That common sense was cloak in a shroud of innuendo, inside sources, and conspiracy.

If in fact AOL, MSN and Yahoo cooperate with one another in some way to fend off the now "evil" Google, all users will be better off than before. They key prediction made by the article and the one on which the veracity of his sources can be measured is the notion that all three companies are going to suddenly obsolete their own IM clients and replace them with some surprising new thing.

That would indeed be a coup for this blogger to have gotten early word on such an event. In the mean time if you believe it, please contact me to make large bets on the subject.

The other thing not mentioned by the article or much of the speculation I've seen on it is that at least some of the IM protocols use peer to peer connections once the two parties have located one another. Remember, if everyone in the universe had a fixed IP address there would probably have never been a need for IM clients at all. Once two parties have identified that they are both on at the same time a direct connection can (and probably should) be established. The only reason we needed servers in the first place was because everyone's IP address keeps changing these days.

What is wrong with all of you

I'm very suprised at how many of you so quickly forget that this service is in beta, and has only been in beta for a week at that. Wait until a product is actually released before complaining about missing features.

Anybody tried it?

Has anybody who runs a Jabber server tried sending email to [e-mail] to see whether and how fast they respond to the request? It's just stupid to speculate on what their motives might be without first taking their word for it that they want to interoperate with "qualified" peers.

Besides, not everybody and their dog is going to be running a Jabber server. As mentioned before, large companies will do it for security reasons, but there are probably few enough of those that google will have no problem accomodating them.

Damn...

everyone needs to relax, it's still in beta.

Why not just run them all?

I'm semi-serious. Why not just run AIM, Yahoo, MSN and Talk? They all have their own unique advantages and I find that I'll use one service for one thing and another service for another when talking to THE SAME PERSON. I'm not so sure I want this all homogenized ala the SMTP and in fact I'm pretty sure I don't. For people who think that this interoperability is really critical may I point you to IRC? IRC has had what people seem to be clamoring for in place since dinosaurs roamed the earth. And ya know what, it kinda sucks.

Sometimes open protocals just kinda start sucky and stay sucky. I'm concerned that if google really does try an "all your IM clients are belonging to us" move that they will actually pull it off. Then it is a commodity and some of the incentive to innovate in the space may be blunted. This is unlike the situation with gmail where they came into an existing space and did not fundamentally change the protocols but simply offered MORE to the existing situation. If you really stop to think about SMTP it is really quite a self-limiting protocal. I don't want a google sledgehammer to come down with a standards stamper and stifle innovation on the music, VoIP, pictures, streaming video, calendars etc etc that are offered over the IM protocols of the various vendors.

My Email to Google

I've been a fan of Jabber for years now, and use it heavily. I was very happy to hear that Google Talk used the Jabber server, but completely disheartened to hear that server-to-server communications don't exist. Why do you choose to create yet another closed IM network? I don't want a gmail account, but I would like to talk to your gmail users with my existing jabber account. What you have created is NOT OPEN, and NOT JABBER but a bastardised subset of its protocols and ideals.

Open up your servers!!!

Mobile phone IM?

It seems to me that lots of people are switching over to mobile phone text messaging. In addition phones are now capable of exchanging multi-media content (speaking to how IM client file transfer just doesn't work).

Somehow, despite the use of various technologies, these messages seem to pass among all the mobile providers. Could the same business model or whatever standards, software, and services provide a solution or inspiration for this problem?

Seven Reasons Why Google Talk Kicks Ass

1. Jabber Backend - an open source instant messaging protocol. Google is a company that actually embraces open source. The entire Jabber protocol is publicly available and well documented. 2. Jabber == Growth - although Google Talk doesn't implement much of the Jabber protocol right now, it has LOTs of room to grow. Features like multi-network communication, IRC-style chat, and offline instant messaging will keep Google Talk a much desired client. 3. Clean Interface - People who claim that Google Talk is "weak" simply do not get it. In fact, it shows just how ignorant they are. They fail to appreciate the simplistic beauty behind the whole thing. Simplicity has always been Google's main advantage and has set them apart from the competitors (compare Yahoo's homepage with Google's). Not every Google Talk user is a g33k. Why would the typical user want to tweak every aspect of the client? Keep it simple! Want more features? Use a more sophisticated client. Remember, Google Talk uses an open system of communication - any Jabber client will work. 4. No spyware 5. No annoying ads, stock tickers, flashy crap, blinking banners, or news tickers. 6. Very small executable - No bloat. No extra crap. Remember, this is just an instant messaging client. That's it! If you want a stock ticker, alerts, news, or whatever, use the corresponding tool. An instant messaging client was never supposed to have all of that crap built in. This is a huge advantage for dialup users and people who don't want or need any extra crap. 7. Integration with other Google products. Gmail integration is already there, but that's not the end of things. I imagine that as time passes, Google will integrate more products such as Google Maps in their product.

Now lets think

Lets think here for a moment In about 2 hours and 15 minutes from the time I read this, GTalk will have been out 1 week. Now, lets think how long other messengers have been out. A long time. They have had time to constantly build to a point where they are freaking good messengers. I'm sure when MSN was out for only a week, it wasn't as good as GTalk is now. Also, you forget that even though its easy to get GTalk, it is still only BETA, thus, its not really fully featured yet. Give it time anbd updates and it will capture the full potential it can acheive.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

But does it run on Linux?

Yes, use Gaim

Re:But does it run on Linux?

Their client may not run on Linux yet but you can use Google Talk on Linux using gAIM or another Jabber complient client: http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html [google.com]

Re:Text

Aaah yes. Slashdot, infringing people's copyright since 1997. It's Livejournal. It won't get slashdotted.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

At least for the Mac, the sad truth is that there is already a native, free, supported, Jabber compatible chat program provided by Apple.

No such luck on Windows

I suspect Linux has a similar program too.

So this was the case of 'upgrading' the Windows OS to match everyone else :)

Re:Google starting to change?

"Of course it is, Google has stocks now, things have changed, along with Google. You shouldn't act so surprised, what with everyone here saying Google will change once it offers stock."

So really nothing has changed then. Google has always had stock and has always wanted to make money. The only difference is that you and I can buy it now.

Re:google talk BETA

I thought it was a Google product family

Gmail Beta
Gmaps Beta
Gtalk Beta

Re:so

I 100% agree, we are becoming our own worst nightmere. But we can be happy that we have slashdotted LJ, now all the 14 year olds can not write about how much life sucks as a middle class white kid :(.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

Yes, there is a client. GAIM, the most popular IM software on Linux can connect to a jabber server with ease. As can Apple's own iChat IM software.

Google Talk, the software, is Windows only though.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

...they must deliver applications that run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X.

I disagree. There is a huge difference between a service and an application. So long as the service is open and documented, they can make applications for whatever platforms they want. The google talk client application is truly a beta. It is Windows only, very no frills, and is missing a boatload of nice features. that is just fine, it's a beta. People who complain about missing features in a free, beta application need a beating with a clue-stick.

They have already announced OS X and Linux versions of the client, but who really cares? Just use a third-party chat client like everyone already does anyway. iChat ships on pretty much every mac, GAIM on most linux distributions. Google has a nice page of instruction on how to set each of them up to use Google Talk, and instructions for several other chat clients as well. I don't see what the problem is.

Re:so

A presidental address or a Nobel prize speech are both delivered through word of mouth, and drunken ramblings about how ugly that guy in the corner is is also word of mouth - they have nothing else in common. I don't see how this article has anything in common with the "let's analyze at my lunch, oh and life sucks" stereotype people like to hold out to be the epitome of LiveJournal - other than the delivery medium. Likewise, would you consider it fair if you discussed quantum physics in a comment, and the rest of the world modded you a troll because "hey, it's a comment"?

Let's not get into the dumb and shallow habit of deriding a message because of its medium.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

Supporting Windows is a tough decision for me. Apart from money-ability, it is true that most people use Windows. I'd argue that the decision to use Windows at home is largely a result of ignorance on the part of consumers, but if I'm going to try and bring something good into peoples' lives, it's hard for me to actually say "no" to Windows. However, I acknowledge that the continued support of Windows by software developers must be a major reason that Windows continues to exist and be the major consumer operating system. So, my decision is hard, though I'd prefer not to develop for Windows at all. Interestingly, Windows was last on my list for platforms I'd like to support on my new application (behind OS X and Linux), and only because of the acknowledged market-share.

Re:jabber users?

I use Jabber. Most of my geek friends use Jabber. Most of my non-geek friends use MSN Messenger, and a few use AIM (it's a lot less popular in Europe). Jabber is good for me because I just have a single account and I can use that to talk to all of the people on my Jabber, AIM and MSNM contact lists.

Re:google talk BETA

Feature complete.

KISS

It's a damned shame that you got modded down for expressing your opinion. Personally, I feel much the same about it as you do. I won't be using GTalk as my main IM program until (even assuming that) they start getting linked up with other servers (providers email [e-mail], as per their FAQ) and their client gets more polished.

At the risk of sounding like an apologist: it is beta, and for something like IM, it does make sense to start simple. In this case, they started really simple. That doesn't mean that I'll use it now, of course, but I'm holding out hope for the future.

Re:But does it run on Linux?

and all they had to do was write it in python with wxpython and it would have een able to run on anything easily.

and yes kiddies you can make a windows app in python that even a windows newbie can install and run easily.

py2exe does a fantastic job of making the windows app an exe and supporting file pile for an installer to toss on the machine, the same app runs under linux as well as OsX.. it's a great RAD language that put's everything else to shame.

Re:jabber users?

I require anyone who wants to IM me use standards. Very rarely am I online the non-standards-compliant IM services.