3 ms·
I've also been running my own federated XMPP server for a few years. To my dismay I discovered about a month ago, that a Gmail user on the "new Hangouts UI" ne
by scintill76 11y ago
I've also been running my own federated XMPP server for a few years. To my dismay I discovered about a month ago, that a Gmail user on the "new Hangouts UI" never saw me as online. I could send them messages but they just got dumped into an "email"-looking message within Gmail, which I don't think even registered as unread. You'd have to go looking to find it at all. I think they could send me messages, but why would they if I never appear to be online? If the Gmail user reverted to the "old chat", things seemed to work as expected. They're nice enough to let you toggle between them for now, but my friend said only the new interface allows free SMSing or something.
Don't take my word too heavily, as this was just what I saw in a quick test with one Gmail account of my own. But I decided if Google is going to basically hellban me, and since almost all of my contacts are on Gmail anyway, I'd just transition to a Gmail account to talk to them. I only have one contact that's not on Gmail, and it's an acquaintance I'll probably not talk to again. Maybe I'll keep the server running just for decentralized geek-cred. At least Google is nice enough to let me use a desktop client, for now.
I also noticed Google doesn't seem to support encryption on federated chats. I guess the proper solution is something like OTR anyway, but that was disappointing to see.
- LeoPanthera 11y agoGoogle turned off XMPP federation ages ago, as far as I know.
- takeda 11y agoWhy no one created a transport for hangouts? This is how XMPP conquered msn, aol, yim and others, and could once again become popular. Is communication with hangouts much harder?
- McGlockenshire 11y agoHard isn't the right word - it seems to not currently be officially possible. There is no documented interface for communication with users on Hangouts. Not even XMPP is supposed to work, though I and some other users are still able to use it. The only API available is for building applications that interact with the existing Hangouts UI.
- ianlevesque 11y agoAIM (OSCAR) was never officially possible either. Reverse engineering has a long history in IM clients.
- McGlockenshire 11y ago> Don't take my word too heavily, as this was just what I saw in a quick test with one Gmail account of my own. XMPP support with Hangouts is currently very, very weird. Even though they shut down the old Google Talk service, and they say everywhere that Hangouts and XMPP don't mix, I'm still able to sign in to the service using XMPP (via Pidgin) and communicate with other Gmail users. No federation here, just directly signing in. I'm waiting for it to eventually just stop working, just as MSN kept their servers alive for a while after their formal end of support announcement and the Skype transition...