Google drops XMPP support
windowspbx.blogspot.comGoogle still support XMPP, it's just that it's not federated (edit: according to 0x006A, it still is so they may just be blocking Microsoft). It's been federated for years though but what was the effect of that? Has Microsoft made MSN messenger interoperable, have they done so with Skype? Have Yahoo? How about Facebook?
Thing is, as Larry said, they support open messaging but why should they do so with companies that don't reciprocate? Last week, Microsoft decided to take advantage of gtalk federated XMPP to make it usable inside Outlook, this is awesome. However, did they make skype usable inside of gmail? No. So Microsoft is happy to use google's messaging federated openness but refuses to share their messaging with Google which gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. As Larry said, they support openness but not to the point of shooting themselves in the foot by giving Microsoft a commercial advantage by integrating gtalk in Outlook while there's no way for Google to do so with Microsoft's Skype.
I think this is pretty fair from Google to defend themselves. And it really takes nerves from Microsoft for complaining about someone blocking them on their messaging network when they have been the king of blocking messaging network with MSN and Skype. Come on.
I don't find the argument that 'if the other guys are jerks, then I too can be a jerk' to be an argument that makes me see anyone in a more favourable light. I thought Google wanted to avoid being Microsoft and Apple, with their unofficial motto, 'don't be evil'.
I prefer it when someone showcases their willingness to be 'the nicer guy' by opening up while the others are closing down. Like allowing to export your GMail contacts, while Facebook won't go the other way around.
I always find Microsoft complaining to be hypocritical, they are usually committing a similar overreach towards a competitor themselves. But still, where are the 'good guys'?
I know, that would be naïve, this is business.
It's not about being jerks too, it's about being able to compete. They can't compete by giving away free stuff to competition when the competition refuses to do the same which gives the competition an unfair advantage (in this case, MS customers being able to use both gtalk and skype inside of outlook but Google customers being unable to run skype inside gmail, this makes people just want to use outlook as it provides more than gmail thanks to MS unwillingness to open skype, see the difference?).
there are two issues involve here. 1) business strategy, 2) being Mr. nice. if google's openness is a business strategy, then there is no excuse to point the finger to microsoft. if google is just a nice guy, why change b/c ms being a jerk? ok. i know folks are afraid of saying it, let me do it: Larry Page and Google are evil. Larry Page, in his best, will be an other John Sculley.
You have led a charmed life if you believe this constitutes evil.
That is hopelessly naive, and not only that but it allows Microsoft to continue to lock in people to their own products.
Think about this: Microsoft spent a fair amount of resources integrating with gtalk, now they can't use it. The only way for them to gain access is to open up their own platforms. Once they do, then everyone is on a more level playing field.
The days of Microsoft shafting the competition through lock-in and anti-competitive behaviour is fast coming to an end. I'm not shedding any tears.
I am not shy about being naïve (I think I said so myself), and I completely understand why Google is doing what it is doing (or why Microsoft is), but that doesn't mean I agree or support what they are doing.
So rather than waiting for Google to become the 'bigger man' (or Microsoft for that matter), which will likely never happen, I will move onto other services, because - fortunately - I have a choice.
My argument being, that if someone is trying to stop me changing services, because I am unhappy about the fact that Google are dropping or federalising their XMPP services, then 'Microsoft is doing the same thing' isn't the argument that is going to send me back to Google.
> I don't find the argument that 'if the other guys are jerks, then I too can be a jerk' to be an argument that makes me see anyone in a more favourable light.
Why would Google want to invest resources on giving Microsoft an unfair advantage over themselves? Microsoft being jerks is the rule since that open letter Bill Gates sent to the Homebrew Computer Club.
In other words, why would you invite a guest that is known to steal stuff and not flush toilets into your home?
> Why would Google want to invest resources on giving Microsoft an unfair advantage over themselves?
Because it's good for the users.
It's not good for users to allow Microsoft to get away with vendor lock-in. This may force Microsoft's hand. That's good for users.
So you can have them steal the 'i am with stupid' branded clothing; with the giant arrow to the thief?
microsoft permitting mitm/google ads in their product ftw
i keep reading that its not federated and yet i am still chatting with people on gmail via xmpp via my own xmpp server.
For now
Until they upgrade to hangouts from GTalk, federation will continue to work.
It's not about Yahoo and other big players. The edge GTalk had was it was capable of talking to my server and to my friends' servers. Now that edge is gone, but it's really not needed any more, they have enough mass to not care.
This is exactly about Skype, Yahoo and others. Only a handful geeks and sysadmins use Gtalk as an XMPP relay to talk to. Losing these few edge cases has no impact at all on Google, however, MS and Yahoo being able to have an unfair advantage does have impact on Google (and by unfair advantage, I mean MS and Yahoo being able to talk to Gtalk but Gtalk not being able to talk to Skype and Yahoo Messenger).
Will they only be blocking Microsoft, or will they shut off federation completely? I have an account on the FSF's XMPP server and I can talk to people on gtalk. If they are shutting off federation completely, then they are just making a walled garden for themselves and using the Microsoft situation as an excuse.
The irony of this coming from Microsoft, a company which has never had a single mainstream XMPP-based product and owner of Skype, which has sent Cease and Desist letters to people creating Skype-XMPP bridges, is not lost on me.
That said, if Google keeps locking down all their former open products/platforms, I will be fleeing ship.
If Hangouts (which replaces Gtalk) drops XMPP support, I see no reason to keep using it.
The sad part is that you will, and some more people will to, but, the mass, will not, because they don't care. If they did, they would not accept ms closed format instead of odt, they would not accept facebook, and would w3c would not create drm extensions as 'open standars' . That's what's sad.
> the mass, will not, because they don't care.
They don't know. Many of those people use multiple instant messengers in parallel, some even use messenger that speak multiple protocols. If these people knew they could interoperate all those, they'd find it awesome.
BTW, drm has nothing to do with interoperation. At least nothing negative, because it enables proprietary content to be delivered in a platform-neutral fashion. Thus killing one more reason to use/create proprietary browser plugins.
This kind of looks like a fight Google was never going to win. They either continue doing what they were doing and allow MS to take competitive advantage of their openness, or they shut the door and MS wins again because Google is suddenly evil.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what happened here, but right now this looks like a perfect example of "see, this is why we can't have nice things," played out in the real world.
Jump ship, guys! SMTP is next!
I jumped a long time ago. But to this day, there is no web app comparable to GMail or GCal.
Not that it matters, GMail has slowly become worse and worse, so I'll gladly settle for pine or mutt these days (or Thunderbird as a start). Google Calendar will likely be the only application I will miss.[1]
But Google is slowly giving me more and more reason to jump ship.
[1] Application I will miss that Google has not already killed (or is going to).
When it comes to services like email, the quality of the user interface is really secondary. The primary concern is the ability to trust that I will remain accessible through the identifier (email address) that I've spread around to many people and places over the years.
Given Google's service shutdowns, dropped support for protocols, and the horror stories of seemingly accidental account closures with no recourse, I simply cannot trust Google with something as critical as my email.
Register your own domain and sign up for the free version of google apps. I have a gmail inbox for jamie@scattered-thoughts.net but if I need to change services I just move the MX record and upload my backups elsewhere.
The free version of google apps has been discontinued. New users can no longer sign up for it.
You can, however, get a similar effect by forwarding all your mail to your Gmail account and configuring it to send mail as your domain email address (including using your SMTP server if necessary).
Definitely a wise move to use your own SMTP server, or you'll end up with "From: ___@gmail.com on behalf of ___@yourdomain.com"[1].
[1] http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/send-mail-from-anoth...
It has been hidden, but not discontinued. You can still create a trial Google Apps account, and then "downgrade" to free account with 10 user limit
Not to mention the fact that you can still get excellent Outlook.com webmail with your own domain for free.
fastmail.fm has made me extremely happy as a mail replacement, though I've been using icloud for calendar, so I can't speak to their replacement for that.
The only downside to the fastmail mail is you need ~200 spams learned before the bayseian filter kicks in, so the first two days were a bit "noisy" for me. After that, though, it reduced the ~10 spams per day that would make it through gmail down to 1 every other day.
I for one welcome our new SMTP overlords which support deletion instead of archiving of messages.
Desktop...
Looks like an open market without hardly a player other than Google and the elk. There's a market specially for paying customers.
Have you looked at fastmail.fm? We do paid email right. And we have a web interface that's faster, slicker and more powerful than GMail.
Disclaimer: I (obviously) work for FastMail. But still, you should check it out. :)
I've a free account - so I open it once in a while. Had enquired some time ago and figured you guys don't host email, rather forward or sth[1]. Still that's the case?
I have also read somewhere that you provide XMPP (or not?) but there's nothing like chat history[2]. Status - etc? I'm not very much familar with XMPP as in what it supports and what not.
Why does it want to me to have a FastMail email address where as all I am going to have is a user-name@my-domain.com. That's an extra Email ID to take care of or it's useless anyway if I'm not supposed to use it other than logging in, or is it[1]^. Looks like this is available in Family and Business account. That's odd. What's the point? Can you please provide a full side by comparison of Family - Biz - Enhanced - Premier?
Maximum attachment size is sth that ought to be at least 100MB (or 200MB in today's Internet) but that can be tolerated with Dropbox, CloudApp and all around.
One good thing is, I can use many domains in same account for just one price, this very attractive if I've read it right and seems you are a webhost too. Well, too many things.
I'm tempted but it doesn't seem to be a replacement for my mail-task-calendar-IM workflow which is very integrated and crucial.
Any words on that? And also, regarding [1]^, so you guys are nor email hosts as in email hosts now - just to confirm?
Glad to talk to someone directly at FM and not inside a support ticket.
[2] - saved as email, covered.
We have always hosted email (to use your own domain you will need an Enhanced or Premier personal account, or any of the Family/Business accounts). We support XMPP fairly completely I believe; you can certainly set a status! Chat history is saved by default and delivered as emails to a Chats folder in your account (so nicely searchable by our swish new email search infrastructure).
You need to pick a FastMail username to use to log in, even if you want to host your own domain. You never have to use this email address if you don't want to.
Family and business accounts are designed for hosting multiple separate accounts (with full separate logins) under the same (normally custom) domain, all on a single bill. There are features for administrating the different accounts and a shared address book. A personal (e.g. Enhanced) account is a single set of mailboxes/login, however can be used with multiple email addresses/domains.
Hope that answers your questions.
One more proof that any good organization becomes money-hungry zombie when reaches certain size.
"Avaya and many others will also loose interoperability" as opposed to tighten interoperability.
So Google is becoming the new Microsoft and vice versa...