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How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

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Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#151

Post by TeMPOraL »

busterarm wrote: post #147

We used to have a relatively open internet based on developing, using an adhering to protocols and open standards. This is probably because everything was new and there was a lot of money on the table for everyone. We would joke about peoples' theories of the "Balkanization of the Internet" and mostly we would look at it from the wrong angle (nation states). Now we have an internet of walled gardens. Your data is pre…

> Now we have an internet of walled gardens. Your data is precious and no longer yours.

And you can't do shit without agreeing to some ToS or EULA. At this point I'm actually waiting for someone to "innovate" a way to dynamically sign EULAs with the same API calls you'd use to get access tokens, just to add insult to injury...

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#152

Post by Freak_NL »

luka-birsa wrote: post #137
signal11 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you didn't use Jabber, the #1 reason I recommended Google Talk was that it was very, very lightweight at a time when MSN Messenger and friends were adding stickers and other teenager/young-adult friendly* features. Today, ironically your choices for relatively straightforward messaging on the PC/Mac are: iMessage (Mac only), Skype for Business (the consumer client is too distracting for words), Whatsapp Web,…

There are others of course. You can go Telegram or Signal as a great cross platform chat. Not geared directly towards business, but still a great alternative. Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens. On my phone I run: Telegram, Messenger, Viber, whatsapp, hangouts, signal, slack and SMS. I should have installed skype as well, but its…

Signal and WhatsApp require a smartphone though, so not fully cross platform, and tied to their (closed) client software. Not sure if Telegram requires a smartphone too, but it does seem to require a phone number at least.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#153

Post by Freak_NL »

pr3dr49 wrote: post #107
rident wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, Slack really is a beast isn't it? I do like the multiple network nature of it (even though everything is saved to Slack's servers) but I find it hard to believe it does so little for it's footprint. They too though made a Google-like transition and went from an open protocol (IRC/XMPP) to a closed/custom API. At least here, the server admin can enable those protocols if they want and the API seems to offer en…

You may explore Mattermost [1] if hosting on your own servers is a requirement. It is very easy to deploy and I found it very satisfactory, albeit testing with a relatively small team. I imagine scaling up would work. It ties in nicely with GitLab, which is another neat product for those who must not or wish not outsource information. [1] https://about.mattermost.com/

Yeah, the GitLab omnibus package comes with MatterMost bundled. It's a really nice solution for self-hosted chat.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#154

Post by pixelpoet »

Just want to say thank you for writing this and bringing it to HN attention.

Gtalk was absolutely amazing, and you could even send files to your friends just so, just drag it into the window! It's 2018 and this functionality is hardly available anywhere anymore.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#155

Post by TeMPOraL »

djhworld wrote: post #129

People on here bemoan the loss of XMPP integration and federated access to these platforms, but do Facebook/Google/Microsoft really give that much of a shit about that? I suspect the % of their userbase who wants, let alone understands those features is very small

Of course they don't give a shit. Because they understand the game - they're the ones putting things on the market, and users have zero choice (network effect means good marketing beats any feature set here).

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#156

Post by Freak_NL »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #144
thallium205 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franz is the modern day equivalent of Trillian/Pidgin.

Not really. That's just yet another instance of web browser, this time with chat-specific tab switching and - as I learned recently - a need to create yet another cloud account... In Pidgin, you actually had it all in one place, with the UX defined by Pidgin . That's another bad thing about current fragmentation. You have no way to unify the UX.

That's by design of course. The client side software is where the interfacing with the user happens, and if your business model is 'first become huge and indispensable, than figure out a way to monetize', you need absolute control over what the user sees and how they interact with your service.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#157

Post by jhasse »

Freak_NL wrote: post #152
luka-birsa wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are others of course. You can go Telegram or Signal as a great cross platform chat. Not geared directly towards business, but still a great alternative. Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens. On my phone I run: Telegram, Messenger, Viber, whatsapp, hangouts, signal, slack and SMS. I should have installed skype as well, but its…

Signal and WhatsApp require a smartphone though, so not fully cross platform, and tied to their (closed) client software. Not sure if Telegram requires a smartphone too, but it does seem to require a phone number at least.

A smartphone isnt required, only a telephone number for authentification.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#158

Post by dmitriid »

monksy wrote: post #81
rident wrote: post #9

Google Talk was only ok when they had a jabber service. It wasn't much better than the other options besides that it tied delayed messaging (email) to instant messaging (jabber) through the same contact info. Then they killed off the jabber client to force users further into their software ecosystem. Then Hangouts came along and has to some degree replaced Talk with further ties into that ecosystem. Then they removed…

I really want Jabber to succeed, but it looks like all of the social providers don't want this and want to keep your communication on their servers. Also, I really don't understand the appeal of pushing 100s of these chat apps out. I.e. Slack, Discord, allo, whats app, etc. They're not compatable with each other. You have to have a 100 different clients installed. Many which their desktop version requires 2 cpus and…

XMPP is the prime example of too little too late. XMPP missed both the shift to mobile and the shift to more engaging and complex messaging.

There is a nice overview in "The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016"[1] where you can see how far behind XMPP is compared to nearly everything else. By 2016 nearly everyone could work over mobile networks, offline messaging, push notifications, syncing between multiple devices, file uploads, end-to-end encryption etc. XMPP had a plethora of experimental XEPs with unknown support across clients and servers. And not much has changed in the past year.

So let's say you have the only client in existence that supports all these XEPs, Conversations for Android [2]. What can you do with it? Oh, you'd have to find a server that supports all your features and talk to people on the same client. And that's about it. For everybody else you're stuck with plain text messages.

It will only get worse for XMPP. AliChat and WeChat has long been the way to pay for anything in China, with over a trillion dollars flowing through their systems annually. Apple, Facebook, Google, Telegram are busy adding payment capabilities to their platforms. It will be years before a relevant XEP is drafted, and another few years before maybe one client and maybe one server will start supporting it.

[1] https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html [2] https://conversations.im

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#159

Post by Piskvorrr »

snitko wrote: post #95
oldcynic wrote: post #21

Instant messaging used to be so simple. You connected via adium or pidgin, and it just worked. You could hook it up to gtalk and msn. Even ICQ and AIM. Then msn wouldn't play nice any more, then gtalk. Now we've had a dozen renames and replacements, XMPP is long gone, and what's left is an almost unusable mess. Add to that the dozens of people I once had connected on Adium (from memory most on Google talk) are now st…

Have you tried Telegram? It's the best.

See, there's the devil, in the details as usual: "Have you [and everybody you wanted to talk to] tried the X [, all having tried it at the same time]? It's the best [when it works, unless it's subtly and invisibly broken, void where prohibited]."

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#160

Post by whateveruser »

luka-birsa wrote: post #137
signal11 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you didn't use Jabber, the #1 reason I recommended Google Talk was that it was very, very lightweight at a time when MSN Messenger and friends were adding stickers and other teenager/young-adult friendly* features. Today, ironically your choices for relatively straightforward messaging on the PC/Mac are: iMessage (Mac only), Skype for Business (the consumer client is too distracting for words), Whatsapp Web,…

There are others of course. You can go Telegram or Signal as a great cross platform chat. Not geared directly towards business, but still a great alternative. Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens. On my phone I run: Telegram, Messenger, Viber, whatsapp, hangouts, signal, slack and SMS. I should have installed skype as well, but its…

Perhaps try Skype lite? It has almost zero bloat, and has been working flawlessly for all my needs.
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