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What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

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

#231

Post by laumars »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #224
laumars wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, not following you. HTTPS and SMTPS are both end to end encryption schemes. In fact they both use SSL in a similar way to secure traffic. Yeah sorry, I explained my point abysmally there. What I meant was e-mails are only encrypted on a node-to-node basis but obviously a proportion of that transport isn't over SMTP. (My complaints are about the entire e-mail stack where as you're focusing on just SMTP, so the…

I think I follow your point about SMTP being secure only node-to-node, but doesn't S/MIME (PGP, etc.) solve the problem of security?

Totally, but that's not standardised across the clients either (plus there's a few different competing solutions for e-mail encryption). This is why I want to redesign the entire stack - to ensure that such solutions are standard across the ecosystem and available by default.

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

#232

Post by deno »

mtgx wrote: post #148
VikingCoder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to be clear, Google is supposed to make video chat with groups of people, recording to YouTube, desktop sharing, and Google Docs live editing work with XMPP? Or else they're evil?

Well I do hope they intend to use WebRTC and WebM for Hangouts soon.

WebRTC is a network overlay, not messaging protocol. You could use XMPP w/ WebRTC just as well.

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

#233

Post by wpietri »

ajross wrote: post #226
philwelch wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between Google Reader and XMPP federation, it's clear that Google is turning against open standards.

Given that Google was, essentially, the only meaningful provider of either a public federated XMPP service or a RSS feed reader[1], that seems like a pretty weak argument. If there's no community, was it ever really open? [1] Calling Google's 100% proprietary (albeit publicly documented) reader protocol an "open standard" is a bit of a stretch, FWIW. Google certainly isn't refusing to support RSS on its blog offering…

Google Reader killed the RSS reader market by offering a solid product for free. You can't use the lack of other options as proof of anything except the depth of Google's pockets.

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

#234

Post by philwelch »

ajross wrote: post #226
philwelch wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between Google Reader and XMPP federation, it's clear that Google is turning against open standards.

Given that Google was, essentially, the only meaningful provider of either a public federated XMPP service or a RSS feed reader[1], that seems like a pretty weak argument. If there's no community, was it ever really open? [1] Calling Google's 100% proprietary (albeit publicly documented) reader protocol an "open standard" is a bit of a stretch, FWIW. Google certainly isn't refusing to support RSS on its blog offering…

There are lots of RSS desktop clients. It's unfortunate that web apps are appearing more vulnerable to Google's monopolistic practices than desktop apps were to Microsoft's.

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

#235

Post by ajross »

wpietri wrote: post #233
ajross wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Google was, essentially, the only meaningful provider of either a public federated XMPP service or a RSS feed reader[1], that seems like a pretty weak argument. If there's no community, was it ever really open? [1] Calling Google's 100% proprietary (albeit publicly documented) reader protocol an "open standard" is a bit of a stretch, FWIW. Google certainly isn't refusing to support RSS on its blog offering…

Google Reader killed the RSS reader market by offering a solid product for free. You can't use the lack of other options as proof of anything except the depth of Google's pockets.

What does "killing the RSS reader market" (a point with which I agree, by the way) have to do with "turning against open standards"?

If anything, your logic would argue that the harm to open standards happened when Reader was introduced, not when it was killed, no?

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

#236

Post by lucid00 »

kyrias wrote: post #156
adrinavarro wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care too much about video chat, YouTube, etc, etc… Just about the plain old XMPP/Jabber user-to-user that was the base for Google Talk and that has been around for many years. The ability to talk with users from different providers. That is being open. Without XMPP federation, we're effectively locked into Google. And it's just a matter of time that they drop XMPP altogether and we have to use their own proto…

Considering that they only enabled federation again a little while ago it's not like that's something new.

They enabled federation months after Google Talk came out actually.

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

#237

Post by loup-vaillant »

pyre wrote: post #223
npsimons wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised Count me out. It wasn't even two weeks ago that we had the story here about how The Onion was hacked because somebody clicked on an obfuscated HTML URL in email.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle, unfortunately. Most people use clients that support HTML right now, and a new format that doesn't support some sort of rich text decoration (like HTML) isn't going to become popular enough to matter.

A ridiculously cheap and powerful alternative to HTML (or any other static format for that matter), would be a bytecode format intended to be executed in a sandboxed virtual machine. Possibly something like Flash. That should give you all the bells and whistles you could possibly want with a document format.

Now, there still are some loose ends about various screen sizes, preferred font family and size, and of course allowing textual searches, but those parameters should be few enough to be less problematic that HTML is right now.

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

#238

Post by ethomson »

pyre wrote: post #219
EvilLook wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. So SMTP and POP3/IMAP? >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 funda…

| So SMTP and POP3/IMAP? I think that the 'clients to talk to servers' part is referring to sending email, unless you think the webmail is the only way to send email. POP/IMAP are for reading email from the receiving server, not for sending out new emails. | So NNTP? I was under the impression that most Usenet networks used UUCP.

> POP/IMAP are for reading email from the receiving server, not for sending out new emails.

They probably shouldn't be, though, there's an IMAP extension for submission.

> I was under the impression that most Usenet networks used UUCP.

No, NNTP. UUCP hasn't been used seriously for over a decade.

Yours, news.ycombinator.com!ethomson

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

#239

Post by ryukafalz »

jpswade wrote: post #3

Don't forget, they tried "open" with Google Wave, which was a total flop. Developers did not buy into it. You can't expect to have it both ways, especially since Apple has proven that a closed infrastructure (walled garden) works.

Wave was never federated. They announced plans to federate, and released a (severely limited) version of Wave as open source, but they never federated the reference implementation at wave.google.com.

The open source code doesn't include one of my favorite features, too... inline private messaging. If we want that back now we have to code it from scratch.

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

#240

Post by jlgreco »

threeseed wrote: post #86
capo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have some proof that this person works for Microsoft ? Because if you don't then YOU are the one degrading the quality of HN with baseless allegations.

Working for Microsoft, or working at Microsoft.

Whether or not he is being paid and regardless of who their employer may be, it seems pretty clear they are working for Microsoft.

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