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I can't understand why they ditched XMPP for corporative Google accounts. Our uni uses Google services but for their stupid chat I have to keep a Hangouts tab o

I can't understand why they ditched XMPP for corporative Google accounts. Our uni uses Google services but for their stupid chat I have to keep a Hangouts tab opened because most XMPP clients won't work with it.

mrweasel 5y ago
While I don't know, I have a guess: Google loves building infrastructure, and they're pretty good at it. XMPP wasn't build in-house, and writing a replacement protocol was something Google could do. What Google absolutely suck at is UI and native applications (at least on the desktop). It's also why their products keep failing. Seriously how hard would it be to build native clients or open the protocol and have it integrated into libpurple. I find it extremely hard to comprehend why Google don't just hire five of the worlds best macOS developer, five Windows developers and five for Linux/BSD and just let them build fantastic clients that integrates into each platform and provide the very best chat experience.
notatoad 5y ago
IIRC they were pretty up-front about why they dropped XMPP - most of the clients connecting over XMPP were spammers, and there were few enough legitimate users connecting over third-party clients that it made more sense to drop XMPP support than build spam-blocking solutions.
vadfa 5y ago
Everybody I know moved on from XMPP years ago. Google and Facebook dropping their support was indeed big part of it. But all in all centralised protocols have proven to be easier, more stable and simply better. Want to roll out a new feature? No need to sit down with a committee for years or wait for all 3rd party clients to keep up: you just implement the feature yourself. Wait... what was the question?
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  > But all in all centralised protocols have proven to be easier, more stable and simply better. Show me a centralised protocol that is better at interoperability between various services?
  - vadfa 5y ago
    Given that as of today xmpp practically doesn't interoperate with anything, well...
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      What do you mean, 'xmpp practically doesn't interoperate with anything'?! Dozens of thousands of xmpp servers interoperate and deliver messages to each other. Or do you expect it to interoperate with Telegram? What next would you expect, UDP <--> ICMP interoperability?
      - zaik 5y ago
        There are in fact transports for Telegram on the XMPP network. https://jabber.hot-chilli.net/server-specifications/#Transports_Gateways_and_Features https://jabber.hot-chilli.net/server-specifications/#Transpo... https://www.jabbim.com/home.html https://www.jabbim.com/home.html
        Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        I don't consider transports as a kind of interoperability. From Telegram's point of view it's just 2 telegram accounts talking to each other. Wherever else this data is sent is not that important. Moreover, I came to a conclusion that reliance on transports reinforces the network effect of external services and weakens XMPP's network effect. Do not use them.
    - MattJ100 5y ago
      There are at least hundreds of implementations of XMPP that are interoperable (at 5-6 actively developed server implementations, many more libraries and many client applications). There are at least hundreds of thousands deployed XMPP services. In addition XMPP can be linked with other protocols/networks via bridges/gateways. Some examples: - Spectrum: XMPP gateway project based on libpurple (support for many protocols): https://spectrum.im/ https://spectrum.im/ - WhatsApp bridge: https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp - Telegram bridge: https://github.com/codingteam/emulsion https://github.com/codingteam/emulsion - Signal bridge: https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/slidge/ https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/slidge/ (replacement of https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald/ https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald/ ) Given such a diverse ecosystem of open-source and proprietary implementations, I'd say XMPP is one of the best examples of widespread protocol interoperability that there is.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Because at that time WhatsApp rose to huge popularity, was bought by Facebook and all of a sudden Google wanted their own walled garden clone.

mrweasel 5y ago

While I don't know, I have a guess: Google loves building infrastructure, and they're pretty good at it. XMPP wasn't build in-house, and writing a replacement protocol was something Google could do. What Google absolutely suck at is UI and native applications (at least on the desktop). It's also why their products keep failing. Seriously how hard would it be to build native clients or open the protocol and have it integrated into libpurple. I find it extremely hard to comprehend why Google don't just hire five of the worlds best macOS developer, five Windows developers and five for Linux/BSD and just let them build fantastic clients that integrates into each platform and provide the very best chat experience.

notatoad 5y ago

IIRC they were pretty up-front about why they dropped XMPP - most of the clients connecting over XMPP were spammers, and there were few enough legitimate users connecting over third-party clients that it made more sense to drop XMPP support than build spam-blocking solutions.

vadfa 5y ago

Everybody I know moved on from XMPP years ago. Google and Facebook dropping their support was indeed big part of it. But all in all centralised protocols have proven to be easier, more stable and simply better. Want to roll out a new feature? No need to sit down with a committee for years or wait for all 3rd party clients to keep up: you just implement the feature yourself. Wait... what was the question?

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> But all in all centralised protocols have proven to be easier, more stable and simply better. Show me a centralised protocol that is better at interoperability between various services?
- vadfa 5y ago
  Given that as of today xmpp practically doesn't interoperate with anything, well...
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    What do you mean, 'xmpp practically doesn't interoperate with anything'?! Dozens of thousands of xmpp servers interoperate and deliver messages to each other. Or do you expect it to interoperate with Telegram? What next would you expect, UDP <--> ICMP interoperability?
    - zaik 5y ago
      There are in fact transports for Telegram on the XMPP network. https://jabber.hot-chilli.net/server-specifications/#Transports_Gateways_and_Features https://jabber.hot-chilli.net/server-specifications/#Transpo... https://www.jabbim.com/home.html https://www.jabbim.com/home.html
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        I don't consider transports as a kind of interoperability. From Telegram's point of view it's just 2 telegram accounts talking to each other. Wherever else this data is sent is not that important. Moreover, I came to a conclusion that reliance on transports reinforces the network effect of external services and weakens XMPP's network effect. Do not use them.
  - MattJ100 5y ago
    There are at least hundreds of implementations of XMPP that are interoperable (at 5-6 actively developed server implementations, many more libraries and many client applications). There are at least hundreds of thousands deployed XMPP services. In addition XMPP can be linked with other protocols/networks via bridges/gateways. Some examples: - Spectrum: XMPP gateway project based on libpurple (support for many protocols): https://spectrum.im/ https://spectrum.im/ - WhatsApp bridge: https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp - Telegram bridge: https://github.com/codingteam/emulsion https://github.com/codingteam/emulsion - Signal bridge: https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/slidge/ https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/slidge/ (replacement of https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald/ https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald/ ) Given such a diverse ecosystem of open-source and proprietary implementations, I'd say XMPP is one of the best examples of widespread protocol interoperability that there is.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Because at that time WhatsApp rose to huge popularity, was bought by Facebook and all of a sudden Google wanted their own walled garden clone.