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What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

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Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#31

Post by subway »

yanw wrote: post #18

Hyperbole aside (they won’t drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these standards and failed. They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly about modernising their infrastructure. Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts of messaging apps on top of XMPP? Google was the las…

Lync 2013 fully supports XMPP federation. Cisco's IM offerings support XMPP federation. IBM's Sametime supports XMPP federation.

Numerous organizations have deployments of these and other, smaller XMPP IM servers.

As for cherry picking standards, isn't that exactly what you're doing with your statement on Chromium and web standards?

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#32

Post by stefantalpalaru »

laumars wrote: post #14
claudius wrote: post #2

Everybody knows that SMTP is old, inefficient (hey, it’s nearly plain-text!), insecure, diversified (so many different servers to choose from!) and generally just bad. Clearly a closed web interface that only runs in Chrome would be much better for everyone! Then people could always be sure with whom they communicate, nobody could hack or social-engineer their way into other accounts, and everyone would have to follo…

SMTP is worse than plain text. It's plain text and base64 (which increases file sizes by ~30%). It's a horrid protocol, but sadly it's what we're currently stuck with. But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP headline is nothing more than clickbait.

woosh!

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#33

Post by [deleted] »

sgoody wrote: post #9

I'm pretty disappointed by the recent dropping of standards that Google has been doing. I'm quite a sceptical person and I've never been a fan of any big corp, but Google has been the one that I've trusted my data in the most and that I've been happiest with. I still trust them with some of my data, but I'm rapidly losing faith in them and in fact I'm starting to think that Microsoft are a more "open" company... and…

[deleted]

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#34

Post by wtetzner »

yanw wrote: post #18

Hyperbole aside (they won’t drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these standards and failed. They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly about modernising their infrastructure. Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts of messaging apps on top of XMPP? Google was the las…

Isn't Facebook chat XMPP?

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#35

Post by snaky »

pfortuny wrote: post #20

Yes, something like this: "Our users do not feel the need for SMTP so much as to make it profitable, we are pursuing other options, hence our SMTP servers will be closed down in 3 months' time. You can continue communicating using Google+ or Gmail." Honestly, they look very much like losing some real-world perspective. I mean real as in 'the table holding my keyboard'.

If that was "Our users do not feel the need for Gmail so much as to make it profitable, we are pursuing other options, hence our GMail servers will be closed down in 3 months' time. You can continue communicating using Google+." I'd say yeah, they are losing some real-world perspective.

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#36

Post by snaky »

subway wrote: post #31
yanw wrote: post #18

Hyperbole aside (they won’t drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these standards and failed. They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly about modernising their infrastructure. Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts of messaging apps on top of XMPP? Google was the las…

Lync 2013 fully supports XMPP federation. Cisco's IM offerings support XMPP federation. IBM's Sametime supports XMPP federation. Numerous organizations have deployments of these and other, smaller XMPP IM servers. As for cherry picking standards, isn't that exactly what you're doing with your statement on Chromium and web standards?

Lync looks really nice with that

edit: XMPP federation feature is not available in Ofice365 Lync options, that's sad

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#37

Post by tiziano88 »

laumars wrote: post #26
yanw wrote: post #18

Hyperbole aside (they won’t drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these standards and failed. They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly about modernising their infrastructure. Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts of messaging apps on top of XMPP? Google was the las…

Coincidentally, only yesterday I installed an XMPP daemon on one of my servers and configured it as a message relay so I can send and receive SMS from my PC via my phone. Facebook chat also uses XMPP. So in answer to your question: yes, there are people still building new stuff on top of XMPP. However I will concede that I'm also a bit IRC advocate - so I'm probably the wrong person to comment on the best newest soci…

No one is taking xmpp away from your server or the applications that are using it; but take Facebook: did they do any effort of integrating their chat with the Gmail one?

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#39

Post by laumars »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #28
laumars wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMTP is worse than plain text. It's plain text and base64 (which increases file sizes by ~30%). It's a horrid protocol, but sadly it's what we're currently stuck with. But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP headline is nothing more than clickbait.

People keep banging on about "plain text, plain text" what is wrong with plain text? And what is wrong with SMTP? Also email attachments can be binary encoded, base64 is just one option. People are free to say that SMTP is "bad" or "broken" but they have to say exactly why that is the case. And "there are multiple different implementations" is a pretty poor justification, as a SMTP replacement would likely have the s…

> People keep banging on about "plain text, plain text" what is wrong with plain text?

Well it's not exactly secure, for one thing.

> Also email attachments can be binary encoded, base64 is just one option.

base64 is a method for encoding binary. You cannot send raw binary other ASCII - which is why base64 is used in SMTP.

> People are free to say that SMTP is "bad" or "broken" but they have to say exactly why that is the case.

Actually I have given a long list of reasons every time I've complained about SMTP[1][2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5510910 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5297472

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#40

Post by dsr_ »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #28
laumars wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMTP is worse than plain text. It's plain text and base64 (which increases file sizes by ~30%). It's a horrid protocol, but sadly it's what we're currently stuck with. But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP headline is nothing more than clickbait.

People keep banging on about "plain text, plain text" what is wrong with plain text? And what is wrong with SMTP? Also email attachments can be binary encoded, base64 is just one option. People are free to say that SMTP is "bad" or "broken" but they have to say exactly why that is the case. And "there are multiple different implementations" is a pretty poor justification, as a SMTP replacement would likely have the s…

Multiple implementations are a strength. In fact, you won't see a good replacement for SMTP without multiple independent implementations.

(What will it look like? I would guess it will look like a two-part service, with one protocol for servers to talk to each other and another for clients to talk to servers. Servers will send tiny notifications to other servers that mail is available for their subscribers; then the receiving servers will retrieve the mail and cache it or store it for clients. This changes the spam problem fundamentally by requiring some persistence on the part of the sending server.)

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