Kangal | # 11 | 2013-05-17, 14:18 | Report

To be blunt, this is the right call.

Open-source is not always the best way to do business. As Google put it, XMPP isn't fully featured enough to incorporate messaging, SMS, MMS, Phone calls, Video calls, Group Calls, Group Conferencing, File attachments, Contacts, Calendar, Social Networking all-together.

On top, it may not be easily be portable to several different systems.

And if Google invested the needed effort, resources, time and money to develop a new standard. Otherwise to evolve the XMPP standard. History would've simply repeated itself.

Other companies would've adopted the standard and forked it for their liking, with no interoperability with Google's efforts. Hence, a new "WatsApp" wouldn't be able to communicate with "Hangouts".

The right call is to get this done right (SMS, MMS, Phone call integration is coming).
Build up a respectable user base.
Market thes hit out of it.
Expand to all markets (OSX, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, Windows Phone, WindowsRT, Windows 7, Windows 8, Xbox Infinity, PS4, Vita and Wii-U).
Then, if the "market is right" release the standard for the masses as an open-sourced project.

Otherwise, you get half-assed work which really doesn't hit home, and gets (ab)used (ab)normally.
Google being evil, is good.

javispedro | # 12 | 2013-05-17, 15:11 | Report

That is quite a lame attempt at criticising Jabber. Jabber fully supports phone calls, video calls, group conference, sending files and more features than most propietary networks can even dream of. The standard's own defined enhacement mechanism has been quite active for the past decade.

In fact, most 3rd party clients lack features the standard supports (e.g. see Nokia's continual refusal of implementing a UI for multiuser chat in the Messaging client, despite the fact the backend component has supported it for a decade!).

The argument that it is not portable is utter garbage, seeing that there are Jabber clients in virtually every platform imaginable.

While I'm quite sure this would have happened, it doesn't make Google's actions any less evil. They've now in fact become like those "other companies".

Watch how you'll never be able to fully use all features of Google's new crappy instant messenger in whatever next plaform you are interested in.


Personally, I had started using my own Jabber server since the last outage. Google has been so evil as of lately, I betted with some friends than on this I/O they would "regretfully announce" dropping support for Jabber. And look at what just happened.

Note that I did not claim my price yet because they have not confirmed the date for the shutdown.

ToniCipriani | # 13 | 2013-05-17, 18:15 | Report

Ars "confirming" it's only federation, client support will still be there.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...-architecture/

I would Google make it official though, and at least give a timeline if it'll be gone eventually. Which I think it's highly likely considering they want to force everyone on G+.

zappAtom | # 14 | 2013-05-17, 18:33 | Report

What means only...I have around 50 GMAIL contacts on my XMPP rooster, so I will all loose them or set up 2 XMPP contacts now everywhere...**** you Google, there is no technical reason for that if you still allow XMPP access with an Google account. This has to do with putting fences around the company. Skype, Google hangout, whatsup, twitter, BBM, they all want to be the new standard..the battle has began and we, the user are the one who will lose!

pali | # 15 | 2013-05-17, 19:45 | Report

Google is going to cut connection between jabber net and gmail's world. But still going to support chatting with *gmail* contacts via jabber/xmpp.

So Google network will be another Facebook - disconnected from whole Jabber network.

Kangal | # 16 | 2013-05-18, 04:41 | Report

Thanks javis! Obviously I know very little about this field and just took Google's word as truth.

To be honest all my connection is through SMS/MMS/Phone call.
And also a Outlook email from my uni. I have a gmail only used for Google services, not used at all.

Then it is a shame.
Supporting open standards that simply work is always better because it allows competition which keeps the users in-line. Great for consumers.

But Google being evil here could still be a good thing.
They might become the next Facebook, and then open up their standards.

Obviously once you become as enormous as something like Facebook, its hard for competitors to defeat you even if they have access to your code.

Human routine is hard to break, we're a stubborn bunch.

Fuzzillogic | # 17 | 2013-05-18, 10:52 | Report

Won't happen. It looks as if open standards are on the decline. Especially Apple has proven that you can make big, BIG bucks using extremely closed standards. And now you see that Microsoft and Google are following suit. Whereas open standards are especially beneficial for smaller companies (using open standards is cheap and there's already an ecosystem in place), they are so large and wealthy that they don't need open standards. The simply create their own specs.

The problem of ignorance seems to be larger. People hop from one service to another in the blink of an eye (myspace->facebook, whatsapp -> snapchat, etc.) but don't seem to grasp or don't care about interoperability and how that would be beneficial. I rarely hear from people that they find it strange that they cannot communicate between whatsapp and facebook, or between iMessenger and GTalk even though they use the same base protocol.

javispedro | # 18 | 2013-05-18, 13:18 | Report

My comms are mostly SMSs too, but the reason is that people were leaving GTalk and getting into propietary networks like Whatscrapp et al.

For me, Whatscrapp has increased my phone bill... because I am forced to send more SMSs now.

Yeah, like Apple. I am still waiting for the iMessages protocol, which they promised to open in one WWDC loooong ago.

It will never happen.

I completely agree.

Hurrian | # 19 | 2013-05-18, 13:27 | Report

Eww. Proprietary chat protocols. What's the point, it's just text with different UIs every time. Well, plus "stickers" or some overlay UI.

Now people around me are pushing WeChat like it's the hottest thing since the iPhone (actually, it's likely due to the fact that Whatsapp is paid on iOS, and the iOS users are butthurt from being left out).

Never mind that WeChat is developed by Tencent which makes QQ (which is a horrible, horrible piece of [censored] I had to deal with when I handled a Chinese client), which is also known to have a government backdoor.

This entire software ecosystem dealie really hurts cross-platform interop. Natch.

The Wizard of Huz | # 20 | 2013-05-18, 15:07 | Report

Just for the sake of information, what closed standards of Apple are you talking about? What standards is Apple using that are closed?

Edit: Not particularly directed to Fuzzilogic, but it is always funny to see people (and media) to pretend as if Apple is the bad guy pushing closed standards and others following them.
The mess in the document format was created by Microsoft and everybody just seem to think that is acceptable and normal. I have to deal with it every time at uni, when I am forced to use Excel and Word over other better and/or free alternatives.
Or the mess of MS blocking MSN integration in the likes of Adium and Fire. Microsoft thrives by forcing people to use their software.

The way MS gives you freedom to install Windows on any pc as long as you buy a license is the same freedom Google gives you in using their products as long as you pay by giving them your user data.

As far as I know you were always free to export your data from the Mac platform/ Apple software. Not so true about MS software in my experience.

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Last edited by The Wizard of Huz; 2013-05-18 at 15:27.