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It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. Email has been so useful and resilient only because it's an open standard which is broadly

It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. Email has been so useful and resilient only because it's an open standard which is broadly agreed on and adopted. Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation and parts of the market being cornered off. Once people start depending on this custom functionality, the vendor usually starts raising the walls to lock people in (see GTalk -> Hangouts.)

icebraining 10y ago
It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. The spec is schema.org, which is a format defined by multiple parties, not just Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org And it's encoded using JSON-LD, which is also not a Google creation, and it's standardized by the W3C.
- zappo2938 10y ago
  Yes, Google has a handful of schema.org schemas for rich snippets, structured data.[0] It's like Google's approach is to help you help them make nice search results to help you. It is definitely not some sort of proprietary thing using standardized structured data snippets. [0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-struc...
erikpukinskis 10y ago
You're talking about some kind of neoliberal openness, where open means "the big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure". That's not my definition of open. My definition open is you can access the spec for free without limitation, and use, modify, and redistribute it as you see fit. If I am feeling grandiose I will concede that openness requires not just access, but easy access and usability by all stakeholders. That's a little radical, but the point is just that there's a degree of accessibility implied in the above. If you have to crawl through a snake pit to get the source perhaps that's not really open. But your definition, which requires buy-in from Oracle and PepsiCo in order to be "open"... I think I reject that definition.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Having a hard time parsing your objections. The standard is http://json-ld.org http://json-ld.org plus https://schema.org https://schema.org. Client developers could freely implement it. It's a W3C standard. But don't modify it just because you can – standards don't like that. It's annoying that google doesn't activate it for everyone, but that's like complaining about browsers allowing adblockers or SSL root certificates being tied to requirements.
- huac 10y ago
  How could you modify this schema and expect it to work with the other players?
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    The same way Google could modify the schema and expect it to work with old clients: graceful fallback.
- niftich 10y ago
  > where open means "the big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure" That's not the 'open' part. That's the 'standard' part, where a broad consensus of all stakeholders is what ensures that it's not a mere thought experiment that lacks adoption.
brokenmachine 10y ago
How have the "walls been raised" with Hangouts?
- dublinben 10y ago
  You can no longer communicate with Google users with the XMPP client of your choice. They require you to use only their client.
  - eric_the_read 10y ago
    I can still chat with Google users via Adium. I suppose if they're not using XMPP they're doing something else, but if Adium supports it, it's probably in libpurple, which means Pidgin and other OSS clients can do it too.
    - stillAbnormal 10y ago
      Then why change it? Why the treadmill? Why send the rest of the ecosystem scurrying about, chasing their tails? And if the ecosystem gets the rug abruptly pulled out from under it one time, then how many more times will their efforts get trashed? Probably as many times as is necessary to shake them loose. No announcements, no roadmap, no communication channel, just a sudden upgrade and everything starts timing out, or throwing errors. Someone threw the killswitch. And they'll toggle it as often as needed, to cut out whatever the target percentage of attrition is.
      - ucaetano 10y ago
        Which ecosystem? There hasn't been a large, open XMPP ecosystem for quite a while...
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > You can no longer communicate with Google users with the XMPP client of your choice. They require you to use only their client. That's not quite true. Google Talk is still available, and you can use that in place of Hangouts, and you can use third-party clients with it. However, you cannot use third-party clients for group chats, and you cannot speak to users on other XMPP servers (there is no true federation).
andrewguenther 10y ago
"Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation and parts of the market being cornered off." This is how innovation happens. If the experiment shows promise, it gains adoption by other vendors. This is basically how every browser advancement in the last 10 years (or more) has come around.
mderazon 10y ago
> Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation This is already happening. Try writing html email that looks good on all email clients and witness the horrors

icebraining 10y ago

It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. The spec is schema.org, which is a format defined by multiple parties, not just Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org And it's encoded using JSON-LD, which is also not a Google creation, and it's standardized by the W3C.

zappo2938 10y ago
Yes, Google has a handful of schema.org schemas for rich snippets, structured data.[0] It's like Google's approach is to help you help them make nice search results to help you. It is definitely not some sort of proprietary thing using standardized structured data snippets. [0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-struc...

erikpukinskis 10y ago

You're talking about some kind of neoliberal openness, where open means "the big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure". That's not my definition of open. My definition open is you can access the spec for free without limitation, and use, modify, and redistribute it as you see fit. If I am feeling grandiose I will concede that openness requires not just access, but easy access and usability by all stakeholders. That's a little radical, but the point is just that there's a degree of accessibility implied in the above. If you have to crawl through a snake pit to get the source perhaps that's not really open. But your definition, which requires buy-in from Oracle and PepsiCo in order to be "open"... I think I reject that definition.

matt4077 10y ago
Having a hard time parsing your objections. The standard is http://json-ld.org http://json-ld.org plus https://schema.org https://schema.org. Client developers could freely implement it. It's a W3C standard. But don't modify it just because you can – standards don't like that. It's annoying that google doesn't activate it for everyone, but that's like complaining about browsers allowing adblockers or SSL root certificates being tied to requirements.
huac 10y ago
How could you modify this schema and expect it to work with the other players?
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  The same way Google could modify the schema and expect it to work with old clients: graceful fallback.
niftich 10y ago
> where open means "the big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure" That's not the 'open' part. That's the 'standard' part, where a broad consensus of all stakeholders is what ensures that it's not a mere thought experiment that lacks adoption.

brokenmachine 10y ago

How have the "walls been raised" with Hangouts?

dublinben 10y ago
You can no longer communicate with Google users with the XMPP client of your choice. They require you to use only their client.
- eric_the_read 10y ago
  I can still chat with Google users via Adium. I suppose if they're not using XMPP they're doing something else, but if Adium supports it, it's probably in libpurple, which means Pidgin and other OSS clients can do it too.
  - stillAbnormal 10y ago
    Then why change it? Why the treadmill? Why send the rest of the ecosystem scurrying about, chasing their tails? And if the ecosystem gets the rug abruptly pulled out from under it one time, then how many more times will their efforts get trashed? Probably as many times as is necessary to shake them loose. No announcements, no roadmap, no communication channel, just a sudden upgrade and everything starts timing out, or throwing errors. Someone threw the killswitch. And they'll toggle it as often as needed, to cut out whatever the target percentage of attrition is.
    - ucaetano 10y ago
      Which ecosystem? There hasn't been a large, open XMPP ecosystem for quite a while...
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > You can no longer communicate with Google users with the XMPP client of your choice. They require you to use only their client. That's not quite true. Google Talk is still available, and you can use that in place of Hangouts, and you can use third-party clients with it. However, you cannot use third-party clients for group chats, and you cannot speak to users on other XMPP servers (there is no true federation).

andrewguenther 10y ago

"Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation and parts of the market being cornered off." This is how innovation happens. If the experiment shows promise, it gains adoption by other vendors. This is basically how every browser advancement in the last 10 years (or more) has come around.

mderazon 10y ago

> Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols we start seeing fragmentation This is already happening. Try writing html email that looks good on all email clients and witness the horrors