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What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

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

#111

Post by pseut »

capo wrote: post #71
CloudNine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we comment on the stories and not the commenters themselves? What is this? A witch hunt?

You don't think it's relevant? Microsoft is paying millions to run anti-Google attack ads and smear campaigns everywhere, it's not unthinkable that they would hire astroturf to roam sites like HN, so for the sake of the health of this community they ought to be pointed out.

There's up and down voting for that, and probably HN's spam filtering matters too. Making comments expressly meant to derail the conversation isn't necessary or useful.

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

#112

Post by unhammer »

RLN wrote: post #23

I have been trying to move away from Google services for a long time, unfortunately it is very tightly integrated in my life (Gmail, Android etc.) and I am both lazy and loath to spend money. Google is fine for now but I won't hesitate to jump ship if I find myself looking at better options.

You don't have to spend very _much_ money. I pay Fastmail $40 a year for 10GB ad-free IMAP+webmail (+2GB file storage that I never use, but I guess that's nice too), I find that very reasonable. It works great with K9-mail on Android (and any IMAP mail client I should think).

I have OwnCloud on my home server with a free SSL cert from StartSSL (you need a domain though if you want to use StartSSL, but that shouldn't cost you much). This gives me contacts and a calendar, which I sync to my Android phone (I also sync the owncloud calendar to my Emacs orgmode files over caldav, giving me two-way sync between Emacs and Android; it's also possible to sync carddav contacts into Emacs, but I haven't tried that yet).

OwnCloud also has a code editor with syntax highlighting, but it's no Google Docs killer yet (but then, I prefer writing TeX with Emacs anyway).

Once it's up and running, it's just as featureful as the Gmail+Google Contacts+Google Calendar combo. If you have android, you do need a Google account for downloading from the Play store, but 1) you can use a throwaway account for that 2) there's also f-droid and other alternative stores.

I switched to Gnus+Gwene for RSS feeds, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really like Emacs. In any case, Google Reader is dead and new alternatives are showing up everywhere.

I use Firefox sync instead of Chromium. Apparantly owncloud can work as an FF sync server, but I haven't tried that yet.

DuckDuckGo fills most of my search needs better than Google ever did, though I do use its !scholar and !i keywords which redirect me back to Google's Scholar, Image searches.

It is possible to wean yourself off Google, and even third-party control of your data in general, but it takes a bit of effort. I find it rewarding though :)

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

#113

Post by andyl »

untog wrote: post #104
capo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTalk is still as is. As for YouTube it is and always have been available on the web for windows phone. Microsoft in clear violation of Google's TOS used undocumented APIs and stripped ads from YouTube and now they have the audacity to say that they would have complied by the TOS if it suited them better. Please take your anti-Google (probably Microsoft sponsored astroturf) elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/sub…

You know, saying that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is "probably Microsoft sponsored astroturf" just makes me picture you with a tin foil hat on your head. Sometimes the truth is a lot simpler than you're thinking it is. You write a lot of posts that are pro-Google. Are you sponsored by Google?!?!?

'Are you sponsored by Google?' I think so. I've been accused of being an 'anti-google astroturfer' before. 'Gosh that's odd', I thought. Then I read the posts written by my accuser. Pro-google, down the line - echoing PR talking points. Normal people don't do this. I do think Google hires PR flacks to post here on HN.

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

#114

Post by technoslut »

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…

I'm not sure why you would put all off you eggs in one basket. That is what I took away from your story.

Many times, these big companies are not the best in their offerings for a given service but rely on their brand to push adoption.

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

#115

Post by untog »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #72
codeka wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds unbelievable It's unbelievable because it's not true. They're dropping XMPP federation , which outlook.com never used anyway. What outlook.com has done is they've added an XMPP client that lets you connect to Google's servers in order to send chat messages to GTalk users. That's still going to work. Also note that what Microsoft have done is allow outlook.com users to communicate with GTalk users, but n…

This thread says otherwise. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714681

That thread of unsourced speculation, you mean?

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

#116

Post by untog »

andyl wrote: post #113
untog wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, saying that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is "probably Microsoft sponsored astroturf" just makes me picture you with a tin foil hat on your head. Sometimes the truth is a lot simpler than you're thinking it is. You write a lot of posts that are pro-Google. Are you sponsored by Google?!?!?

'Are you sponsored by Google?' I think so. I've been accused of being an 'anti-google astroturfer' before. 'Gosh that's odd', I thought. Then I read the posts written by my accuser. Pro-google, down the line - echoing PR talking points. Normal people don't do this. I do think Google hires PR flacks to post here on HN.

That just makes you sound as bad as capo.

We live in a world where weird fanboys exist for just about anything, including Google and Microsoft.

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

#117

Post by icebraining »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #47

Wait, so Google is dropping XMPP support because Outlook.com is supporting it to allow Gtalk users to chat on Outlook.com, so in order to perpetuate the GMail/GTalk lock-in by caging the Gtalk chat users to GMail, they're dropping standards support and killing access to all XMPP clients in existence including non-Microsoft ones? And they announce this right when Microsoft spent all the time and effort to allow Outloo…

trying to lock out millions of Windows Phone users from Youtube by sending a C&D takedown on the app

Open browser → type youtube.com. How exactly are they "locked out"? Please stop throwing FUD; whether they should provide API access is a fair discussion, but let's not make stuff up.

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

#118

Post by icebraining »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #87
wslh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess open standards don't work when you're the guy trying to lock in users. That's obvious for Google too. They don't open source their search engine (or even Google Reader!). They open source a browser and an operating system to sell other stuff. For Google open source is a weapon.

“They open source a browser and an operating system to sell other stuff.” No, those were already open source before Google got involved, so Google didn’t really have a choice.

Uh, no. None of them existed before Google. What did exist were two pieces of infrastructure (Webkit and the Linux kernel), and Google could've used both without open-sourcing the rest of the application, since the licenses allow it:

- Webkit is LGPL/BSD, so it can be linked to proprietary code without forcing its redistribution.

- The Linux kernel is GPL, but the license has never applied to userspace code, and everything "above" is either written by Google or non-copyleft open source code.

I think it's only reasonably for Google to contribute some after getting so much from open source projects, but that doesn't mean they didn't have the legal choice to do otherwise.

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

#119

Post by uxp »

sp332 wrote: post #91
codeka wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds unbelievable It's unbelievable because it's not true. They're dropping XMPP federation , which outlook.com never used anyway. What outlook.com has done is they've added an XMPP client that lets you connect to Google's servers in order to send chat messages to GTalk users. That's still going to work. Also note that what Microsoft have done is allow outlook.com users to communicate with GTalk users, but n…

They dropped XMPP federation a couple of months ago. The new move is away from XMPP entirely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714557

They also restored it only a month ago, claiming they temporarily had to disable it to counter a large spam issue.

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/google-reinstates-federate...

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

#120

Post by thwarted »

samastur wrote: post #27
reidrac wrote: post #7

Can someone confirm Google is killing XMPP and its server-to-server federation? The Verge says Hangouts is not using XMPP but does it mean that XMPP (Google Talk) is definitely going away?

They are not in short term. But do you expect them to keep it going when they have alternative, preferred way of doing and limited resources?

The idea that Google has limited resources, in any practical manner, is laughable.

Google already does some kind of charity work, it would be interesting to see them support the continued development of open protocols as side projects to their main offering. This would be the cost of a handful of developers per project/protocol. But they didn't want to support even the small group that was working on Reader, which used to be a core business offering.

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