6 ms·

I'm hoping with the ousting of Vic Gundotra, Google will reenable XMPP federation with Hangouts... For those unaware, for years GTalk supported using XMPP/Jabb

by zx2c4 12y ago

I'm hoping with the ousting of Vic Gundotra, Google will reenable XMPP federation with Hangouts... For those unaware, for years GTalk supported using XMPP/Jabber to talk to other servers. A handle of whateverwhatever@gmail.com could speak through GTalk to someone using a different XMPP server with somethingelse@personaldomain.com. With the introduction of Hangouts, this is no longer possible. In order to talk to GTalk users, you might be using a Google account. Now before there's too much confusion: yes, Hangouts/GTalk users can still use XMPP clients, like Pidgin or Adium, to talk to other Hangouts/GTalk users. But such users can no longer talk to people using the global federated XMPP network of servers that are not Google. For years I enjoyed being able to run my own XMPP server, do some interesting things with it, and still talk to my friends and family on GTalk. Now I'm forced to use Google to maintain this. In other words, they took a well functioning standard that was successfully decentralized, federated, and working extremely well, and deliberately neutered the decentralized aspects. Now there is the nice decentralized XMPP, and Google's XMPP, separate, distinct, broken. It's a damn shame. Gtalk federation worked great for years, and it's only been with the G+era strangulation that it's disappeared.

darklajid 12y ago
I don't share your hope, but oh yes. That'd be amazing. Currently it's a usability nightmare and entirely unclear who can reach you and who cannot. As someone without Hangout or G+ people with a @gmail.com suffix might or might not be able to contact me, sometimes depending on the age of their mobile or whether they use GMail at this particular moment. Their presence might or might not be accurate, because they are either away or use Hangout and stay 'away' forever (not offline, nooooo. They are away in G+ land..). I hope you are right and I'm wrong.
- zx2c4 12y ago
  > Currently it's a usability nightmare and entirely unclear who can reach you and who cannot. Yes! Exactly this. I had started working on a Prosody server side plugin that would route messages for Hangouts users through a Google Account if they were on Hangouts instead of old-Gtalk, but the details of detection seemed flaky at best. When I have some time, I'll give it another look by examining the User-Agent the client sends. I'm not hopeful, but I guess there's a chance.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Facebook is shutting down the XMPP gateway too next year: http://eion.robbmob.com/blog/2014/05/14/facebook-to-shut-down-their-xmpp-service/ http://eion.robbmob.com/blog/2014/05/14/facebook-to-shut-dow... Interestingly, it was announced a couple of days after Cryptocat launched its Facebook encryption plugin. https://blog.crypto.cat/2014/05/cryptocat-now-with-encrypted-facebook-chat/ https://blog.crypto.cat/2014/05/cryptocat-now-with-encrypted...
grinich 12y ago
What did the XMPP change have to do with Vic?
- presootto 12y ago
  Nothing at all; this was a decision made by the Hangouts team. The XMPP change has to do with the NIH syndrome a lot of Google engineers suffer from, combined with the incompetence of the Hangouts PM, Kate Cushing. Disclaimer: I work for Google.
  - zanny 12y ago
    But google invented Jingle, and in the XMPP space I can't imagine they didn't have a dominate authority. And you can add whatever extensions you want to XMPP, standard or not.
    - ralphm 12y ago
      Google did start Jingle and large part of their work ended up in the Jingle standards at the XMPP Standards Foundation. However, Google Talk and the old Hangouts took quite a while to move to the standardized version, and were never fully compliant. Also, in other areas, Google never quite interacted with the community and left major issues unresolved. Basically all of the issues, perceived flaws or missing features attributed to XMPP in the old implementation of Hangouts were either misinformed or have seen development or new specifications in the XSF. Google never contributed to such discussions, with the exception of individual Googlers helping with Domain Name Associations (DNA, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05).
  - zx2c4 12y ago
    So far as I can see, the Hangouts implementation still uses XMPP, and even sends some federated messages to other servers. It looks like there has been some kind of code added to specifically block the functionality for which code already exists.
    - 12y ago
pjc50 12y ago
Presumably the defederalisation was to enforce chatting (a) such that google knew your real name and (b) such that you were subject to surveillance.
girvo 12y ago
Know the worst part of Hangouts? Using any client other than the crappy extension for Chrome, you can't do group text chats. Flamingo[0] is an amazing XMPP client for Hangouts, but is useless for work because we use group chats for everything. Drives me crazy, and Google refuse to release an actual API for Hangouts, so it's not being fixed anytime soon. I'm trying to convince work to move to IRC or HipChat, or anything other than Hangouts (but my boss loves Google everything, so that's a losing battle). [0] http://flamingo.im http://flamingo.im
- joosters 12y ago
  Yes! It's really frustrating because if you are using another chat client (e.g. Apple messages), everything seems to work except you won't see any sign of group chats. This has caused plenty confusion for me with friends wondering why I'm not responding to messages. What's even worse is that Google's hangouts app is pretty much unusable. For some reason it doesn't list all of my contacts, won't show if anyone is available and gives no indication about who I could chat with.
  - girvo 12y ago
    Yep. And it refuses to use Mavericks notification centre, and it hates multi monitor setups as well. Sigh.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    We don't we just stop using google hangouts if they are such a PoS? Is it the screen sharing? Everyone is already logged in? I find them infuriating, and only use it begrudgingly.
- fossuser 12y ago
  I'd recommend checking out slack for your work - we started using it and it's the best chat/collaboration software I've ever used. https://slack.com/ https://slack.com/
- drdaeman 12y ago
  > and Google refuse to release an actual API for Hangouts In old good days we didn't ask for protocols. We just took the specs by force, by reverse engineering. Worked well with ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and loads of others, except for, possibly, Skype (which was reverse engineered, but late to the party) And "alternative" messengers survived and even prospered (seriously outplaying the dysfunctional, overweight and ad-ridden "official" ones), even if they were actively fought by network owners. Given that official Hangouts "desktop" app is is nearly completely unusable - and even more for those who don't use Chrome - and even web messenging support is lacking (you just can't put a button "Contact me on Hangouts" on your site), I'm a bit curious why no one cared about Hangouts enough to play that game once again.
izacus 12y ago
That would be awesome, but I don't have high hopes - Google probably wants to have ability to modify protocol as they wish for new features. It seems they practically have no will to build a translation layer :/
- ralphm 12y ago
  In short, it is very unlikely the reasons for abandoning federation, or dropping XMPP altogether with Google Voice, are technical in nature.
- darklajid 12y ago
  That doesn't make a lot of sense though. There are already lots of places where that stuff is falling back to "Sorry, can't do this". Ignoring hardware limitations (running hangout on a phone without a front facing camera maybe?) you already have the 'user runs a browser that needs a plugin to fullfil the request, but plugin is missing' case. Which is reported as a failure to both users (with a somewhat helpful message). Using anything hangout-y over xmpp can fail for all I care. That's not the problem. The problem is that they broke the parts that _map well_. You cannot text me if you're using hangout (unless you're on gmail.com and use the 'gtalk' chat widget). I cannot see your presence. There's a difference between 'not building a translation layer' (for oh-so-awesome new features) and deliberately breaking things that work since, like, forever. I agree with the sibling: It's deliberate and just another Google 'Move to out platform and never get out' move. (Other examples: »"Upgrade" your browser to Chrome.« »Install a "modern" browser to get automatic translation of websites.« - ignoring all the 'Join G+' nonsense)
Svip 12y ago
I am confused. I use DuckDuckGo's Jabber/XMPP service (dukgo.com), and I can easily talk to Google Accounts through Bitlbee, even if they are using Pidgin, GMail's chat interface or whatever. The only obstetrical I have encountered so far, is that it requires at least 3 or 4 tries to add a Google user. But afterwards, it's not a problem. Edit: One of my friends using dukgo.com also confirms this behaviour.
- zx2c4 12y ago
  If they've switched to Hangouts, you will no longer be able to reach them. Google users using the old non-plus-ified gchat, which is being phased out, will still work as before, but for people who get upgraded to Hangouts, they'll be cut off. So this basically includes everyone on a smartphone, or everyone using video chat, and soon it will be just everyone entirely.
  - Svip 12y ago
    Aha. Maybe I just keep good company for failing to notice that.
    - dmix 12y ago
      Apparently they plan to end support for the "old" hangout version at some point in the future. Hopefully it's not soon.
  - josteink 12y ago
    Well that's certainly interesting, but me too, I haven't really noticed that. Because while in the past, my primary reason for installing Pidgin was connecting to Google's excellent XMPP service, I now only have it hooked up to my Facebook account. I don't see any value in Hangouts. That's right. As creepy and closed as Facebook is, I still find it a much higher value service than Hangouts. Plus it actually lets me connect to people I know reliably. Hangouts is the perfect example of taking a good service and throwing it in the shitters. I can barely use the official Android-client. It's just gone completely downhill. It may not be too late for Google to recover from the terrible slope they've taken on ever since the persisted, user-hostile G+ fiasco, but I can't imagine the tarnish their brand has taken to ever have been worth it.
lnanek2 12y ago
I wish they would support open protocols too, but that just isn't Google any more. They are closing down lots of APIs besides XMPP compatibility after all.
shmerl 12y ago
Google is totally messed up. Complete lack of communication of their plans, weird betrayal of XMPP efforts and etc. I gave up on them completely.
dunham 12y ago
One case I think you left out (although I may have misread what you wrote): You can talk between GTalk and a federated XMPP server if the the GTalk user is logged in via XMPP. So if I send a message from my work XMPP server to my google address, it shows up in Adium, but not in the hangouts client. It's almost as if Google's XMPP network is separate from hangouts, and they only allow messages directly to/from the Google XMPP to propagate between them.
Aloha 12y ago
For the past couple weeks I have been able to IM from inside the hangouts app to non-google XMPP users this includes the reverse, wherein I get notifications from them too.

by zx2c4 12y ago

darklajid 12y ago

I don't share your hope, but oh yes. That'd be amazing. Currently it's a usability nightmare and entirely unclear who can reach you and who cannot. As someone without Hangout or G+ people with a @gmail.com suffix might or might not be able to contact me, sometimes depending on the age of their mobile or whether they use GMail at this particular moment. Their presence might or might not be accurate, because they are either away or use Hangout and stay 'away' forever (not offline, nooooo. They are away in G+ land..). I hope you are right and I'm wrong.

zx2c4 12y ago
> Currently it's a usability nightmare and entirely unclear who can reach you and who cannot. Yes! Exactly this. I had started working on a Prosody server side plugin that would route messages for Hangouts users through a Google Account if they were on Hangouts instead of old-Gtalk, but the details of detection seemed flaky at best. When I have some time, I'll give it another look by examining the User-Agent the client sends. I'm not hopeful, but I guess there's a chance.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Facebook is shutting down the XMPP gateway too next year: http://eion.robbmob.com/blog/2014/05/14/facebook-to-shut-down-their-xmpp-service/ http://eion.robbmob.com/blog/2014/05/14/facebook-to-shut-dow... Interestingly, it was announced a couple of days after Cryptocat launched its Facebook encryption plugin. https://blog.crypto.cat/2014/05/cryptocat-now-with-encrypted-facebook-chat/ https://blog.crypto.cat/2014/05/cryptocat-now-with-encrypted...

grinich 12y ago

What did the XMPP change have to do with Vic?

presootto 12y ago
Nothing at all; this was a decision made by the Hangouts team. The XMPP change has to do with the NIH syndrome a lot of Google engineers suffer from, combined with the incompetence of the Hangouts PM, Kate Cushing. Disclaimer: I work for Google.
- zanny 12y ago
  But google invented Jingle, and in the XMPP space I can't imagine they didn't have a dominate authority. And you can add whatever extensions you want to XMPP, standard or not.
  - ralphm 12y ago
    Google did start Jingle and large part of their work ended up in the Jingle standards at the XMPP Standards Foundation. However, Google Talk and the old Hangouts took quite a while to move to the standardized version, and were never fully compliant. Also, in other areas, Google never quite interacted with the community and left major issues unresolved. Basically all of the issues, perceived flaws or missing features attributed to XMPP in the old implementation of Hangouts were either misinformed or have seen development or new specifications in the XSF. Google never contributed to such discussions, with the exception of individual Googlers helping with Domain Name Associations (DNA, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05).
- zx2c4 12y ago
  So far as I can see, the Hangouts implementation still uses XMPP, and even sends some federated messages to other servers. It looks like there has been some kind of code added to specifically block the functionality for which code already exists.
  - 12y ago

pjc50 12y ago

Presumably the defederalisation was to enforce chatting (a) such that google knew your real name and (b) such that you were subject to surveillance.

girvo 12y ago

Know the worst part of Hangouts? Using any client other than the crappy extension for Chrome, you can't do group text chats. Flamingo[0] is an amazing XMPP client for Hangouts, but is useless for work because we use group chats for everything. Drives me crazy, and Google refuse to release an actual API for Hangouts, so it's not being fixed anytime soon. I'm trying to convince work to move to IRC or HipChat, or anything other than Hangouts (but my boss loves Google everything, so that's a losing battle). [0] http://flamingo.im http://flamingo.im

joosters 12y ago
Yes! It's really frustrating because if you are using another chat client (e.g. Apple messages), everything seems to work except you won't see any sign of group chats. This has caused plenty confusion for me with friends wondering why I'm not responding to messages. What's even worse is that Google's hangouts app is pretty much unusable. For some reason it doesn't list all of my contacts, won't show if anyone is available and gives no indication about who I could chat with.
- girvo 12y ago
  Yep. And it refuses to use Mavericks notification centre, and it hates multi monitor setups as well. Sigh.
- sitkack 12y ago
  We don't we just stop using google hangouts if they are such a PoS? Is it the screen sharing? Everyone is already logged in? I find them infuriating, and only use it begrudgingly.
fossuser 12y ago
I'd recommend checking out slack for your work - we started using it and it's the best chat/collaboration software I've ever used. https://slack.com/ https://slack.com/
drdaeman 12y ago
> and Google refuse to release an actual API for Hangouts In old good days we didn't ask for protocols. We just took the specs by force, by reverse engineering. Worked well with ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and loads of others, except for, possibly, Skype (which was reverse engineered, but late to the party) And "alternative" messengers survived and even prospered (seriously outplaying the dysfunctional, overweight and ad-ridden "official" ones), even if they were actively fought by network owners. Given that official Hangouts "desktop" app is is nearly completely unusable - and even more for those who don't use Chrome - and even web messenging support is lacking (you just can't put a button "Contact me on Hangouts" on your site), I'm a bit curious why no one cared about Hangouts enough to play that game once again.

izacus 12y ago

That would be awesome, but I don't have high hopes - Google probably wants to have ability to modify protocol as they wish for new features. It seems they practically have no will to build a translation layer :/

ralphm 12y ago
In short, it is very unlikely the reasons for abandoning federation, or dropping XMPP altogether with Google Voice, are technical in nature.
darklajid 12y ago
That doesn't make a lot of sense though. There are already lots of places where that stuff is falling back to "Sorry, can't do this". Ignoring hardware limitations (running hangout on a phone without a front facing camera maybe?) you already have the 'user runs a browser that needs a plugin to fullfil the request, but plugin is missing' case. Which is reported as a failure to both users (with a somewhat helpful message). Using anything hangout-y over xmpp can fail for all I care. That's not the problem. The problem is that they broke the parts that _map well_. You cannot text me if you're using hangout (unless you're on gmail.com and use the 'gtalk' chat widget). I cannot see your presence. There's a difference between 'not building a translation layer' (for oh-so-awesome new features) and deliberately breaking things that work since, like, forever. I agree with the sibling: It's deliberate and just another Google 'Move to out platform and never get out' move. (Other examples: »"Upgrade" your browser to Chrome.« »Install a "modern" browser to get automatic translation of websites.« - ignoring all the 'Join G+' nonsense)

Svip 12y ago

I am confused. I use DuckDuckGo's Jabber/XMPP service (dukgo.com), and I can easily talk to Google Accounts through Bitlbee, even if they are using Pidgin, GMail's chat interface or whatever. The only obstetrical I have encountered so far, is that it requires at least 3 or 4 tries to add a Google user. But afterwards, it's not a problem. Edit: One of my friends using dukgo.com also confirms this behaviour.

zx2c4 12y ago
If they've switched to Hangouts, you will no longer be able to reach them. Google users using the old non-plus-ified gchat, which is being phased out, will still work as before, but for people who get upgraded to Hangouts, they'll be cut off. So this basically includes everyone on a smartphone, or everyone using video chat, and soon it will be just everyone entirely.
- Svip 12y ago
  Aha. Maybe I just keep good company for failing to notice that.
  - dmix 12y ago
    Apparently they plan to end support for the "old" hangout version at some point in the future. Hopefully it's not soon.
- josteink 12y ago
  Well that's certainly interesting, but me too, I haven't really noticed that. Because while in the past, my primary reason for installing Pidgin was connecting to Google's excellent XMPP service, I now only have it hooked up to my Facebook account. I don't see any value in Hangouts. That's right. As creepy and closed as Facebook is, I still find it a much higher value service than Hangouts. Plus it actually lets me connect to people I know reliably. Hangouts is the perfect example of taking a good service and throwing it in the shitters. I can barely use the official Android-client. It's just gone completely downhill. It may not be too late for Google to recover from the terrible slope they've taken on ever since the persisted, user-hostile G+ fiasco, but I can't imagine the tarnish their brand has taken to ever have been worth it.

lnanek2 12y ago

I wish they would support open protocols too, but that just isn't Google any more. They are closing down lots of APIs besides XMPP compatibility after all.

shmerl 12y ago

Google is totally messed up. Complete lack of communication of their plans, weird betrayal of XMPP efforts and etc. I gave up on them completely.

dunham 12y ago

One case I think you left out (although I may have misread what you wrote): You can talk between GTalk and a federated XMPP server if the the GTalk user is logged in via XMPP. So if I send a message from my work XMPP server to my google address, it shows up in Adium, but not in the hangouts client. It's almost as if Google's XMPP network is separate from hangouts, and they only allow messages directly to/from the Google XMPP to propagate between them.

Aloha 12y ago

For the past couple weeks I have been able to IM from inside the hangouts app to non-google XMPP users this includes the reverse, wherein I get notifications from them too.