Google Talk Is Being Discontinued • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#491

Post by hiptobecubic » Sun, Mar 26, 2017, 3:03 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #433

TeMPOraL wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point - especially important if someone's thinking about legislating a particular technology. On the other hand, maybe in this case it would be enough to legislate a requirement for openness of the protocol? I.e. whatever it is, if it has enough many users, it has to be fully available to third party integrations.

What about SMS? Everyone has it, it works, and is usually fairly instant. It's not very feature rich, but could there be an SMS 2.0 protocol that was backward compatible?

Isn't this RCS?

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#492

Post by sctb » Sun, Mar 26, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

prodmerc wrote: post #386

And no one gives a shit. Just like Google+, it can be gone tomorrow and no one (in their right mind) will miss it.

Please don't post unsubstantive dismissals here, especially rude ones.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#493

Post by zekevermillion » Sun, Mar 26, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

martin1975 wrote: post #406

zekevermillion wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could probably afford to drink one fewer craft brew per month.

do it. they have so many features.. you get your own fax # too, plus you can fax whatever.. it's a total solution. You're right - we waste money on stupid stuff (not saying beer's dumb, love it myself) but won't pay a little for things that have value and aren't associated with google or advertising...

I'm going to take your suggestion! I was joking about google, they are pretty amazing. But I need more power, and if I can get it for a few bucks a month it's well worth it.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#494

Post by simplyluke » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:43 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #123

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…

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, Mic…

Historically giving the government more power to legislate the structure and content of digital systems has been disastrous.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#495

Post by simplyluke » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:46 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #377

cortesoft wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if they don't publish the protocol? Do we block downloads of their client? Even if we assume they are American companies, and we can sue them if they violate the rule; how on EARTH would we define an IM protocol broadly enough to avoid an easy avoidance of the law, but narrowly enough to not basically block all proprietary protocols?

Good questions. If a company doesn't publish the protocol in use within, let's say 3 months of a valid request by a third-party then they'd be liable to a fine, perhaps something like $1 per day per registered user, plus costs of government and registered third parties in pursuing the interoperability request. Small companies might escape, but if Facebook tried it they can't really run away. You'd need to be able to…

> You'd need to be able to issue notices to ISPs to block those convicted of breaking the law, such orders are already part of UK law (against torrent discovery websites for example)

And most of us in the US hope we never lose the right to open access in the way citizens of the UK have. I can't think of a worse thing to happen to the internet. The UK has proven that once you allow a government to censor the content of the internet they will aggressively and rapidly expand that power to censor and control.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#496

Post by kethinov » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 6:52 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #490

kethinov wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Launch a terrific, convenient new email service that doesn't federate and watch how quickly users will choose federation over convenience.

They did, it's called Facebook. Slack if you don't like that example.

Those are IM services.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#497

Post by sneak » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 12:02 PM UTC

kethinov wrote: post #496

sneak wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, it's called Facebook. Slack if you don't like that example.

Those are IM services.

That work asynchronously even when I'm not online, that I can check later, that have functionally replaced almost all of the communication that used to happen over email...

It's technically and functionally identical to non-federated email.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#498

Post by st3v3r » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

jpindar wrote: post #374

st3v3r wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On Android they changed "Email" client to "Gmail" client." No, they didn't. Those are two separate apps. The Email one is part of AOSP. The Gmail one is part of Google Apps. Although many OEMs roll their own email client, as part of their custom skin.

On my Nexus 4, (Android 5.1.1), when I click on what used to be the email icon, I get a screen that says "Email has moved. The Gmail app now lets you view all of your email accounts." It has only one option (and a help link). That option is "TAKE ME TO THE GMAIL APP". How do I get to the plain email client?

You install it

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#499

Post by kethinov » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 6:32 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #497

kethinov wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are IM services.

That work asynchronously even when I'm not online, that I can check later, that have functionally replaced almost all of the communication that used to happen over email... It's technically and functionally identical to non-federated email.

Slack doesn't replace email. That's a silly marketing slogan. Imagine for a moment if it really did. What if Slack became so popular that everyone stopped using email? That would be horrifying. You wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone without using Slack because it doesn't federate with any other service. Every website would have to integrate with Slack for user account registrations. Etc. Decentralized federated communications is the backbone of the internet. The fact that IM services have never broadly adopted federation dramatically cripples the potential of the medium with horrible fragmentation and balkanization.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#500

Post by StuffMaster » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 1:36 AM UTC

plg wrote: post #122

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 se…

Google Talk was an instant messaging system that replaced others for many people. It was XMPP so you could use any client with it (Pidgin was popular). It was great because not everybody wants to use web based IM.