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Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

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Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#171

Post by calanya »

Perceptes wrote: post #159
PeterisP wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, why did you answer "Sure" to his question if the answer is actually "No, you can not run a homeserver right now on your smartphone" ? I mean, a python app for posix systems is not really close to being run on unrooted android and iOS.

I somehow didn't process the "it's a smartphone part" and completely misunderstood his question as a result. I'll edit my original reply to correct that. Edit: Apparently I can't edit it anymore. :{

That's fine. I am really interested in the possibility of running a 'homeserver' directly on a phone.

Do you think that would be possible?

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#172

Post by scrollaway »

jhgg wrote: post #138
aftbit wrote: post #46

Who is building the open-source Slack? Four things are needed: 1. Good support for multiple active clients, including mobile. If I see a message on desktop, I shouldn't get notified on mobile. If I read on one client, when I reconnect on another, it should show me the convo starting where I left off. Etc etc. 2. Eternal history (ideally configurable by users/channels) with decent search. 3. A few basic bells-and-whis…

Although it's not open sourced, you should check out discord ( https://discordapp.com/ ). Although our niche is gamers, lots of people use Discord for tons of other things. We've got all those things except search (but we're working on it!) (disclosure: i work there)

Discord is great. We use it at my company.

Search is sorely lacking. Tab complete is buggy. But it's really great.

Really wish you'd open source it.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#173

Post by smoyer »

chris_wot wrote: post #130
lqdc13 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that username/password is still the only choice for privacy minded people.

Google Talk did have XMPP functionality, which allowed for SASL. [1] But of course, they killed this off because they wanted to dominate chat and messaging with their own proprietary protocol. If they had not followed this strategy they would be killing in this market, even whilst supporting XMPP Federation. But they have chosen to release multiple proprietary products, so they aren't the lead in the market. Silly of…

I'm still using XMPP to connect to GChat ... I use it every workday (via Pidgin).

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#174

Post by chris_wot »

smoyer wrote: post #173
chris_wot wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Talk did have XMPP functionality, which allowed for SASL. [1] But of course, they killed this off because they wanted to dominate chat and messaging with their own proprietary protocol. If they had not followed this strategy they would be killing in this market, even whilst supporting XMPP Federation. But they have chosen to release multiple proprietary products, so they aren't the lead in the market. Silly of…

I'm still using XMPP to connect to GChat ... I use it every workday (via Pidgin).

One day it will go away...

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#175

Post by cm3 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #142
inopinatus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The removal of XMPP interoperability was the moment I realised "Don't Be Evil" was just another marketing puff, and not actually a statement of values. But I think the termination of Google Wave (which was also federated and built with XMPP) was the real moment Google gave up on team communications.

It amazes me how many people think that ending GChat/XMPP federation was the result of some kind of cigar smoking, moustache-twirling "evil". I worked at Google at the time. It was killed for engineering reasons, that boiled down to: 1. Nobody used federation. 2. Except spammers. They used it a lot. Trying to keep federation alive whilst fighting spammers took a lot of effort. 3. It complicated the code a lot. Featur…

> It already happened for personal correspondence (facebook) and I'm sure at some point it'll happen for work correspondence too.

I don't know the numbers but I'm part of the population that never used Facebook, so I'm unconvinced you can generalize like that.

> Put simply, in a world where clients are all free and the identifier of choice is the phone number, federation doesn't add much value.

I didn't really understand Moxie's arguments, but he may know more due to the projects he's involved in.

But how is interoperability achieved? The beauty of HTTP, NNTP and SMTP are that you're not bound to one (or maybe two) client experiences or server implementations. I don't understand the desire to leave achievements like that on the floor just for temporary comfort. It's a slippery slope and will lead us into a long time of silo'd communication.

To me the current proposals look like if I had to use 4 different post offices depending on whom I want to send a package to. There's a reason addresses are universal.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#176

Post by Certhas »

voltagex_ wrote: post #64
Perceptes wrote: post #53

Just about every week now there is a top story on HN about the disastrous state of interoperable messaging in the digital world. Every time it comes up, I implore people to look into Matrix ( https://matrix.org ), a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company. I really hope to see it…

I really really like the ideas of Matrix, but the problem is none of my friends are on it. I had the same problem when I started to use Signal. WhatsApp actually seems like the lesser of two evils right now - even though it's controlled by Facebook, they've added encryption and some of my friends are on it. Who'd have thought we'd look back on the days of MSN, AIM and ICQ as the golden age of interoperable messaging?…

I have had some success with getting people on signal, though now that Whatsapp is encrypted by the same technology there doesn't seem to be a big benefit anymore. Generally it seems to me people are not so adverse to having several messanging sollutions installed these days.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#177

Post by drdaeman »

cpach wrote: post #160
amelius wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't open chat already solved by Jabber decades ago?

Moxie Marlinspike recently published an interesting essay that adressed this question. ”XMPP is an example of a federated protocol that advertises itself as a ’living standard.’ Despite its capacity for protocol ’extensions,’ however, it's undeniable that XMPP still largely resembles a synchronous protocol with limited support for rich media, which can't realistically be deployed on mobile devices. If XMPP is so exte…

> Like any federated protocol, extensions don't mean much unless everyone applies them, and that's an almost impossible task in a truly federated landscape. What we have instead is a complicated morass of XEPs that aren't consistently applied anywhere.

The problem is, without actual numbers - how many clients support what - this statement is just a personal opinion, not a rule.

We can say exactly the same about the web. It's also federated, it also has fractured client support (although, sadly, core engines can be counted on fingers) and it's also full of extensions. While I won't praise the web, and I'll surely admit that the trends for siloing are strong (for many, a single big social network site of their choice is the "web"), it still manages to provide somehow decent user experience.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#178

Post by reuven »

nly wrote: post #157
reuven wrote: post #113

When Slack first came out, and everyone got all excited about it, I was quite skeptical. I've been using Skype (and lots of other IM systems) for years; do I really want or need something new? The answer, for me at least, was yes: Slack is new, different, and better. And nearly all of that difference is because of a vastly better UI, on my desktop, in my browser, and on my phone. So, did Google Chat work? Sure. Did i…

Ultimately slack is just a proprietary IRC, with a solution for message persistence falling out its centralized design. IRCCloud and ZNC both solve the same problem. Its slick as hell, but still a walled garden.

Yes, this is my greatest regret and problem with Slack: Someone could have made amazing IRC clients (and servers), and kept it open to the world. It's a shame that a solved problem with open-source tools has been turned into a billion-dollar proprietary company.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#179

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

nroets wrote: post #152
insane_dreamer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Google failed to realize is that people want chat that's connected to other services they frequently use. I'm already browsing FB so it's easy to chat with my FB friends using Messenger rather than both pop over to another service. The same reason why MSFT has tried (much less successfully) to incorporate its chat offerings into Office365 and the reason it bought Skype. Google was in a position to capture the ch…

Great theory. Except that outside the US people who are FB friends tell each other "I want to chat, give me your number so I can add you on WhatsApp". Outside the US, WhatsApp is winning because of network effects.

> Outside the US, WhatsApp is winning because of network effects.

In which country? Because I have tons of messengers installed and so do most people I know outside the US.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#180

Post by forand »

smoyer wrote: post #173
chris_wot wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Talk did have XMPP functionality, which allowed for SASL. [1] But of course, they killed this off because they wanted to dominate chat and messaging with their own proprietary protocol. If they had not followed this strategy they would be killing in this market, even whilst supporting XMPP Federation. But they have chosen to release multiple proprietary products, so they aren't the lead in the market. Silly of…

I'm still using XMPP to connect to GChat ... I use it every workday (via Pidgin).

Google stopped supporting XMPP in the sense that they stopped trying to change XMPP to fit their needs. They also started killing off support for arbitrary XMPP servers, e.g. you cannot run your own and expect it to work with Google Chat. (This was the most up to date link I could find.)[https://xmpp.org/2015/03/no-its-not-the-end-of-xmpp-for-goog...]
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