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Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

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Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#121

Post by chrisallenlane »

eachro wrote: post #60

At this point I have no idea which Google chat client is which. A few years ago I remember having Google Talk on my android phone. Then after some random update the application disappeared from my phone and was replaced with hangouts. Now is Google Talk the same as GChat? Was Hangouts anything more than just a new branding for Google Talk? I have no idea. And what's up with this Google Allo thing? Again, it seems lik…

I agree 100%. I'm frankly still not certain if Google talk and G-chat are even the same thing. I've used G-chat for a long time, but don't remember the name being changed.

Also, regarding branding: even overlooking the shell-game Google is playing with regards to moving features around (SMS => Voice, SMS => Hangouts, SMS => ?), the branding was confusing from the outset:

- Google Chat (GChat) - Google Talk - Google Voice

These might as well be synonyms.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#122

Post by plg »

I'm really not being a troll here, I'm just confused:

Google Talk : what is that? Is that the little box on the left hand side of the page on gmail that lets you chat with other gmail users?

Google Hangouts : different? I know it's videochat but it also has text ... a different thing?

The Android/Google phone chat app thingy --- is this different still?

obviously I'm not a regular google user at least not of these services

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#123

Post by pbhjpbhj »

shmerl wrote: post #35
scrollaway wrote: post #27

Here's what I don't get about Google. A few years ago, they were one of the only players in the IM game, alongside MSN, AOL IM, ICQ... have you heard about any of these lately? Of course not, they're all dead. Talk was built on top of XMPP, an open protocol, which helped its popularity as third party clients could connect to it. Talk was also built in to gmail, and at the time that was revolutionary: A fast and light…

Not just failed. Google betrayed XMPP. You can blame Eric Schmidt for it. He gave some lame speech about how other instant messaging services aren't playing fair, so Google should also become a walled garden. And that was it. They made Hangouts and stopped caring about federated IM idea. It's a wonder we can send e-mails between many servers. Imagine someone like Eric Schmidt driving it. We'd be stuck with incompatib…

Perhaps this is the point we need legislation to require that IM services with above X users in the relevant jurisdiction must provide a full, open, protocol and enable interoperation via the published protocol? That's the only way I see the companies involved would move to enable cross-platform communications?

Aside:

>It's a wonder we can send e-mails between many servers.

I have a shared account on a small ISP, Microsoft won't receive our emails, even when replying to an email from a Microsoft user, even when user whitelisted. [It's probably the same with some other suppliers?] The only way to reply to people using Outlook/Hotmail/Live (I'm a user of hotmail for something like 16 years) is now to send via MS servers - basically had to make an account for this purpose.

The sending IPs aren't blacklisted with Senderscore (or other blacklists, I mention senderscore because they apparently provide domain reputation services for MS); some "related IPs" have medium reputation scores (senderscore 72).

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#124

Post by the_common_man »

shmerl wrote: post #35
scrollaway wrote: post #27

Here's what I don't get about Google. A few years ago, they were one of the only players in the IM game, alongside MSN, AOL IM, ICQ... have you heard about any of these lately? Of course not, they're all dead. Talk was built on top of XMPP, an open protocol, which helped its popularity as third party clients could connect to it. Talk was also built in to gmail, and at the time that was revolutionary: A fast and light…

Not just failed. Google betrayed XMPP. You can blame Eric Schmidt for it. He gave some lame speech about how other instant messaging services aren't playing fair, so Google should also become a walled garden. And that was it. They made Hangouts and stopped caring about federated IM idea. It's a wonder we can send e-mails between many servers. Imagine someone like Eric Schmidt driving it. We'd be stuck with incompatib…

They have already mail email incompatible. They haven't changed protocol but best of luck if you run your own email server.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#125

Post by shmerl »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #118
shmerl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just failed. Google betrayed XMPP. You can blame Eric Schmidt for it. He gave some lame speech about how other instant messaging services aren't playing fair, so Google should also become a walled garden. And that was it. They made Hangouts and stopped caring about federated IM idea. It's a wonder we can send e-mails between many servers. Imagine someone like Eric Schmidt driving it. We'd be stuck with incompatib…

If you're looking for a future in federated chat: matrix.org. I think there's real potential in the protocol and Im slowing moving most of my chat activity there.

Matrix looks interesting, though I'm not sure why they use HTTP for transport. Sounds a bit counter intuitive, since HTTP was never built for proper duplex communication. XMPP (in the browser) had to use BOSH to work around that, then came WebSockets, WebRTC and so on.

Another intereting one is Tox.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#126

Post by wykydtron »

donatj wrote: post #113

I've never understood that Hangouts… wasn't Google Talk? I still don't exactly understand.

Google's marketing department.... Ugh... Gmail (for your website) gets renamed to Google Apps, then rebranded to Google Apps For Business. Then they throw that out the door and call it "G Suite "G Suite for Business" and "G Suite for Enterprise" - killing me Google... I mean Alphabet...

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#127

Post by 1_2__3 »

erpellan wrote: post #102

"Collaborate on standards. Compete on quality" Or something, I'm probably butchering the quote. There's a reason we can play CDs from any manufacturer in every manufacturer's player. Likewise SD cards, VHS videos, DVDs... The importance of working with your competitors was well understood in the 1980's. Seem's it's a lesson we need to learn again: https://hbr.org/1989/01/collaborate-with-your-competitors-an...

Good analogy. I was thinking of this the other day - while technically the big players are in standards committees together and do work on common standards, in practice it's a bunch of corporate maneuvering that bears no resemblance at all to things like the kind of things Sony, Toshiba, Onkyo, Panasonic and other big players do when they decide they want to accomplish something. Can you imagine Google, Apple and Microsoft regularly forming cross-team working groups to specifically develop technology and associated standards to be adopted by all?

They're too busy suspiciously eyeing each other's userbases to waste time on anything like long-term strategic thinking that benefits anyone but themselves. To be honest it feels like that kind of collaboration is long gone - it came about because it was necessary to actually serve consumers. But while someone who purchased a Compact Disc player is a Sony customer, a person who uses chat is not a Google customer - they're a SKU. The whole way the Internet tech industry is structured is exactly the opposite of what you'd want if you wanted to encourage collaboration. By making users and their data a commodity instead of customers there's no benefit at all to improving their general experience.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#128

Post by nickbauman »

scrollaway wrote: post #27

Here's what I don't get about Google. A few years ago, they were one of the only players in the IM game, alongside MSN, AOL IM, ICQ... have you heard about any of these lately? Of course not, they're all dead. Talk was built on top of XMPP, an open protocol, which helped its popularity as third party clients could connect to it. Talk was also built in to gmail, and at the time that was revolutionary: A fast and light…

> You know, I can get behind that XMPP wasn't up to the task - I tried dealing with XMPP myself and it's a frustrating piece of work.

XMPP is weird, true; it relies on opening an XML document and sending fragments of XML for the duration of the session and only closing the document at session completion. Very odd. But it performs extremely well. And once you get your head wrapped around the constraints, it's not so bad.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#129

Post by pbhjpbhj »

scrollaway wrote: post #109
giancarlostoro wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly Facebook also used to do XMPP which is annoying as well. Used to be you could login to either one from any XMPP client, this means Pidgin, which most people used to use for MSN Messenger, which I miss so much when I think of what has happened to Skype. Even though MSN Messenger had it's own weird flaws (like locking people out of their own accounts because people would force login attempts to force lock your ac…

> I secretly wish Discord had been based out of some open standard because it is well done. I want to highlight that this is not realistically possible for anyone, not right now anyway. When Discord was created, XMPP was the only option if you wanted to adopt an open standard, and it was absolutely not up to the task . Matrix was also an option but far too new. Discord is a startup, and is run as a business (just lik…

>making it an open protocol from the get-go removes a lot of your freedom //

Can you expand on that. Are Discord using someone else's closed protocol then in preference to their own (which they could open) or an already open one?

Or did you mean "freedom" as in "ability to use lock-in", or something else?

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#130

Post by wykydtron »

aclimatt wrote: post #64

Can somebody please explain to me Google's messaging strategy? As a Voice, Talk, Hangouts, SMS user for what feels like the last decade, I am so incredibly confused that I want to walk into Google and fire all 18 of the 19 messaging teams. That way at least we'll have one singular group to yell at when things go wrong. Here's the Google Messaging landscape as far as I know it: - Google Talk in Gmail: I think this is…

Gtalk.exe should be on this list... Man I miss desktop IM apps...
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