from Hacker News

No, it’s not the end of XMPP for Google Talk

by ralphm on 3/2/15, 6:11 PM with 62 comments

  • by lnanek2 on 3/2/15, 7:35 PM

    This is a terrible, inaccurate article to link. Google Talk is going away, so is irrelevant. Google has a big banner on pages about it that it is going away. I don't even understand why the article talks about it so much and mentions it can still be used inter-server without SSL. That's just silly and clouding the issue. Google Talk is irrelevant to anyone now.

    Google Hangouts will only show Google+ people as someone you can message. Period. There are some vague little interop features left. You can login direct to Google servers and chat with a third party client, yes.

    Google has officially said they will no longer support federation - so other companies Jabber servers and user accounts will not work with Hangout users. So of the two huge user side things everyone is talking about: choose non-Google clients and login directly to Google still has some support, choose non-Google account is going the way of the dodo very much so.

    The article, I guess, only really cares about XMPP like caring about "do developers still use Java". The point it makes isn't really the end user sort of thing people are talking about. Google could still use XMPP internally and the article would be screaming yes, but it could be irrelevant to users if there's no interop anyway.

  • by shmerl on 3/2/15, 6:50 PM

    > However, since the Google Talk Service does not support server-to-server encryption via TLS (something that was required by RFC 3920 in 2004), a number of servers (including jabber.org) refuse to establish a connection since May 2014.

    Yeah, that's the deadly deal breaker. Practically all servers make it mandatory now. Since Google blatantly refuse to support server to server encryption (I wonder why), all my contacts that use Google Talk are basically cut off. Goodbye Google, you became evil as soon as you decided not to open Hangouts protocol for everyone and broke XMPP federation for Google Talk.

    Server to server encryption problem was reported to Google multiple times, but they used their usual stonewalling response to address it.

  • by zo1 on 3/2/15, 8:56 PM

    If anyone is curious, here is a paste-bin of an email sent out by Google to users that are stubborn and still logging in to Google Talk:

    http://pastebin.com/kjMWriAK

    #Note, I am one of them.

  • by mey on 3/2/15, 6:38 PM

    Ok, I just read the facts they list and state and I come away with a very different perspective. XMPP for all but the most advanced end users is dead at google. If they are using the protocol internally matters little if the user experience and federation is broken.

  • by impostervt on 3/2/15, 6:40 PM

    I definitely preferred Google Talk to Google Hangouts - it was just simpler. Now I have Pidgin hooked up and it works pretty good.

  • by johngalt on 3/2/15, 7:31 PM

    Everyone wants to take XMPP, but no one wants to give XMPP. The old Microsoft model of embrace and extend. What could stop this sort of behavior?

    Could standards be constructed in a way the punishes greedy 'compliance' while still providing enough benefit to keep implementations from simply ignoring standards all together?

  • by JustSomeNobody on 3/2/15, 9:33 PM

    It's very sad that we've reverted back to proprietary messaging APIs.

  • by uniformlyrandom on 3/2/15, 6:47 PM

    So it is not the end of XMPP - XMPP is just broken for the mainstream clients.

    Maybe it is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end.

  • by nextweek2 on 3/2/15, 7:42 PM

    XMPP as a protocol is a deadend.

    An open message platform is a great idea but individuals don't care. They are happy with walled gardens and XMPP doesn't have a USP to convince them otherwise.

    Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and move on.

  • by zx2c4 on 3/2/15, 10:14 PM

    Actually, the issue is that Hangouts doesn't work with federated XMPP. This means I can't talk to my @gmail.com friends from my own XMPP server. This is a problem, which significantly breaks things.

  • by wnevets on 3/2/15, 7:14 PM

    I hate the hangsout ui so much. Google voice and google talk are must easier to read and use.

  • by daemin on 3/3/15, 12:42 AM

    So gone are the days of being able to have one IM client for all of the different protocols. It's going to be on the desktop the same as it is on the phone, and we're all going to be running 4-5 different IM clients with all the same features just to be able to talk to everyone.

  • by stormbrew on 3/2/15, 8:10 PM

    I've been having increasing problems even having messages properly make it through between XMPP and Hangouts clients lately. Sometimes I have to open up hangouts on my phone so my gtalk messages actually go through to another user.

    So I'm not sure it's clear that even the days of that interop aren't numbered as well.

  • by ikeboy on 3/2/15, 7:47 PM

    Could someone explain what this means for routers using google voice for voip service like http://www.obihai.com/googlevoice?

  • by rererererere on 3/2/15, 7:29 PM