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They still have their XMPP as well, but they never enabled SSL so it sends messages in plaintext and won't federate to modern XMPP servers/clients. What a clus

by Mizza 10y ago

They still have their XMPP as well, but they never enabled SSL so it sends messages in plaintext and won't federate to modern XMPP servers/clients. What a clusterfuck of a company.

cantbecool 10y ago
So let me get this straight, it works with older XMPP servers, but not modern, up to date versions of said servers?
- e7c6ht6iad 10y ago
  Google Talk is deprecated, do you really expect them to enable new features?
- Arnt 10y ago
  No, it doesn't. Google tore down the federation on purpose, with a configuration change. Rumour has it that it was a spam response. There's an interesting similar spam campaign going on right now in email, BTW. https://wordtothewise.com/2016/09/ongoing-subscription-form-abuse/ https://wordtothewise.com/2016/09/ongoing-subscription-form-...
dima55 10y ago
The federation thing is something they explicitly broke. Google talk could talk to other XMPP servers just fine
sidcool 10y ago
Calling Google a clusterfuck of a company is appalling. They would not do this without a strategic thought. Even Facebook has Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and FB itself. All doing pretty well.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- barkingdog 10y ago
  Those portfolios are not even remotely compatible. Hangouts is the only viable product there. Meanwhile, all of Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and FB are each very strong products with extremely, almost worrisomely strong network effects. Clusterfuck is a bit vague and maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you've got to admit that it's truly hard to think of Google as a company that makes best-in-class consumer software products anymore.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    On an unrelated note Zuckerberg really is a genius. Instagram and WhatsApp were in hindsight superb purchases since the network effects have turned out to be far stronger than I think most people ever expected. Likewise splitting out Messenger makes so much sense since companies are now targeting it for their AI/Bot strategies.
  - bigtones 10y ago
    Google has seven products that are used by more than a billion users per month. They are the only company in the world that can say that - that by definition IS best in class.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Google never was a company that made best in class consumer software products. Search (maybe Maps?) is the only thing it's ever excelled at.
    - bane 10y ago
      I would argue it's advertising delivery.
    - crottypeter 10y ago
      what about gmail?
    - peejaybee 10y ago
      GMail was definitely best in class for web mail when it rolled out, and if something has taken its lead, I don't know what it is.
- icebraining 10y ago
  How did that strategy work for Buzz, Wave, Lively, Jaiku, Meebo and Talk? Their strategy seems to be throwing stuff at the wall and trying to get something to stick.
  - blunte 10y ago
    It does indeed appear to be their strategy; although it seems to work well enough for them. It's just a bit frustrating for users who periodically lose an app they came to depend on.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Does it work for them, though? I don't remember their successful products arising from this process; they never had a bunch of email services before Gmail, nor multiple mobile OSs before Android, nor different browsers before Chrome, etc. The closest might be Google Video before YouTube, but it wasn't really the same kind of product.
      - shawabawa3 10y ago
        > The closest might be Google Video before YouTube, but it wasn't really the same kind of product. Also YouTube was already the dominant player (beating google video) by the time google acquired it. It wasn't built by google
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    And when it does stick, half the time they ignore it while it oozes down the wall anyways. Hangouts was a success but they treat it like a failure.
- threeseed 10y ago
  Facebook and Instagram are social networks for sharing content. They aren't messaging platforms. And WhatsApp is an independent company. It makes zero sense to compare it to Google which is absolutely a mess.
- csydas 10y ago
  > They would not do this without a strategic thought But, as the saying goes, "the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry". Google really does have a really skittish habit of acquisitions, creations, and closures. Remember 'buzzing' with your email? Remember Wave, the product that not even Google knew what to do with? Having a large assortment of applications in your portfolio isn't what is being criticized when calling Google a "clusterfuck", it's the strangeness by which this portfolio is managed. Products rise and fall seemingly without a lot of warning. Some are integrated into others, others are heavily promoted while others are left to fester. With Facebook's acquisitions, they mostly are left to run on their own, just under Facebook control with Facebook slowly sliding their tendrils into each app. (We see this with Whatsapp, Instagram is overrun with ads), but the products themselves aren't integrated or changed dramatically for the end user. With Google, it's really difficult to get excited or really heavily invested in products that aren't called Gmail because it's just really hard to tell what the product is going to be doing even half a year down the line, or if it will even exist. This isn't "like all other products", this is a statement based off of how Google historically has operated. It's great that Google is willing to take risks, but they keep pushing these new ventures as having re-invented the wheel and all of the ventures require quite a bit of buy-in from the end-users; if it fails for Google, they write it off since they can. End users are left with a obsolete product they likely intended to use for a heck of a lot longer. So yeah, when you have Google releasing new apps that compete with already existing Google Apps (as well as a multitude of other similar apps from other companies), I think it's fair to wonder what is going on. Even if there is a strategy, I'm not convinced that it's much more than "let's see if people like this better than ____", which isn't exactly a winning strategy in my book. Allo/Duo just don't really seem to offer much that doesn't already exist, and their release makes me suspicious about whether or not their current message/video/voice service, Hangouts, is about to get axed or left in the dust or what.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- calinet6 10y ago
  "Clusterfuck" is a perfect description. No one is saying that the clusterfuck isn't valuable, profitable, or useful. They're just saying it's a clusterfuck. The LA freeway system is a clusterfuck, but without it the city wouldn't work. We can still criticize LA's lack of a good transportation system, and recognize that something more organized would be, well, better.
Nanite 10y ago
Agreed they never appreciated what they had with Google Talk. Closing XMPP support and have it replaced by Hangouts was a huge mistake.
- hobarrera 10y ago
  > Closing XMPP support and have it replaced by Hangouts was a huge mistake. It wasn't a mistake, it was deliberate with the intention to lock in users.

by Mizza 10y ago

They still have their XMPP as well, but they never enabled SSL so it sends messages in plaintext and won't federate to modern XMPP servers/clients. What a clusterfuck of a company.

cantbecool 10y ago

So let me get this straight, it works with older XMPP servers, but not modern, up to date versions of said servers?

e7c6ht6iad 10y ago
Google Talk is deprecated, do you really expect them to enable new features?
Arnt 10y ago
No, it doesn't. Google tore down the federation on purpose, with a configuration change. Rumour has it that it was a spam response. There's an interesting similar spam campaign going on right now in email, BTW. https://wordtothewise.com/2016/09/ongoing-subscription-form-abuse/ https://wordtothewise.com/2016/09/ongoing-subscription-form-...

dima55 10y ago

The federation thing is something they explicitly broke. Google talk could talk to other XMPP servers just fine

sidcool 10y ago

Calling Google a clusterfuck of a company is appalling. They would not do this without a strategic thought. Even Facebook has Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and FB itself. All doing pretty well.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
barkingdog 10y ago
Those portfolios are not even remotely compatible. Hangouts is the only viable product there. Meanwhile, all of Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and FB are each very strong products with extremely, almost worrisomely strong network effects. Clusterfuck is a bit vague and maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you've got to admit that it's truly hard to think of Google as a company that makes best-in-class consumer software products anymore.
- threeseed 10y ago
  On an unrelated note Zuckerberg really is a genius. Instagram and WhatsApp were in hindsight superb purchases since the network effects have turned out to be far stronger than I think most people ever expected. Likewise splitting out Messenger makes so much sense since companies are now targeting it for their AI/Bot strategies.
- bigtones 10y ago
  Google has seven products that are used by more than a billion users per month. They are the only company in the world that can say that - that by definition IS best in class.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Google never was a company that made best in class consumer software products. Search (maybe Maps?) is the only thing it's ever excelled at.
  - bane 10y ago
    I would argue it's advertising delivery.
  - crottypeter 10y ago
    what about gmail?
  - peejaybee 10y ago
    GMail was definitely best in class for web mail when it rolled out, and if something has taken its lead, I don't know what it is.
icebraining 10y ago
How did that strategy work for Buzz, Wave, Lively, Jaiku, Meebo and Talk? Their strategy seems to be throwing stuff at the wall and trying to get something to stick.
- blunte 10y ago
  It does indeed appear to be their strategy; although it seems to work well enough for them. It's just a bit frustrating for users who periodically lose an app they came to depend on.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Does it work for them, though? I don't remember their successful products arising from this process; they never had a bunch of email services before Gmail, nor multiple mobile OSs before Android, nor different browsers before Chrome, etc. The closest might be Google Video before YouTube, but it wasn't really the same kind of product.
    - shawabawa3 10y ago
      > The closest might be Google Video before YouTube, but it wasn't really the same kind of product. Also YouTube was already the dominant player (beating google video) by the time google acquired it. It wasn't built by google
- Pxtl 10y ago
  And when it does stick, half the time they ignore it while it oozes down the wall anyways. Hangouts was a success but they treat it like a failure.
threeseed 10y ago
Facebook and Instagram are social networks for sharing content. They aren't messaging platforms. And WhatsApp is an independent company. It makes zero sense to compare it to Google which is absolutely a mess.
csydas 10y ago
> They would not do this without a strategic thought But, as the saying goes, "the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry". Google really does have a really skittish habit of acquisitions, creations, and closures. Remember 'buzzing' with your email? Remember Wave, the product that not even Google knew what to do with? Having a large assortment of applications in your portfolio isn't what is being criticized when calling Google a "clusterfuck", it's the strangeness by which this portfolio is managed. Products rise and fall seemingly without a lot of warning. Some are integrated into others, others are heavily promoted while others are left to fester. With Facebook's acquisitions, they mostly are left to run on their own, just under Facebook control with Facebook slowly sliding their tendrils into each app. (We see this with Whatsapp, Instagram is overrun with ads), but the products themselves aren't integrated or changed dramatically for the end user. With Google, it's really difficult to get excited or really heavily invested in products that aren't called Gmail because it's just really hard to tell what the product is going to be doing even half a year down the line, or if it will even exist. This isn't "like all other products", this is a statement based off of how Google historically has operated. It's great that Google is willing to take risks, but they keep pushing these new ventures as having re-invented the wheel and all of the ventures require quite a bit of buy-in from the end-users; if it fails for Google, they write it off since they can. End users are left with a obsolete product they likely intended to use for a heck of a lot longer. So yeah, when you have Google releasing new apps that compete with already existing Google Apps (as well as a multitude of other similar apps from other companies), I think it's fair to wonder what is going on. Even if there is a strategy, I'm not convinced that it's much more than "let's see if people like this better than ____", which isn't exactly a winning strategy in my book. Allo/Duo just don't really seem to offer much that doesn't already exist, and their release makes me suspicious about whether or not their current message/video/voice service, Hangouts, is about to get axed or left in the dust or what.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
calinet6 10y ago
"Clusterfuck" is a perfect description. No one is saying that the clusterfuck isn't valuable, profitable, or useful. They're just saying it's a clusterfuck. The LA freeway system is a clusterfuck, but without it the city wouldn't work. We can still criticize LA's lack of a good transportation system, and recognize that something more organized would be, well, better.

Nanite 10y ago

Agreed they never appreciated what they had with Google Talk. Closing XMPP support and have it replaced by Hangouts was a huge mistake.

hobarrera 10y ago
> Closing XMPP support and have it replaced by Hangouts was a huge mistake. It wasn't a mistake, it was deliberate with the intention to lock in users.