[jdev] jabber @ google talk ?

[Fabio Forno]

Ian Paterson wrote:
> Yes, maybe we're all going to gain from seeing how Google approach this?
> [Although we'd all hate to see them require a legal agreement before
> allowing interconnects - imagine if all servers required that!]
>

Hope this is not their solution. A network of trust could work (actually
CAcert is a network of trust, if I got it) since no server admin would
be Aunt Tillie ;)

> The only problem I have with Google's approach today is that they are
> claiming openness without providing any. [Today their service is no more
> open than AIM, Yahoo or MSN - we can use Gaim on any of those networks
> too.]
> 

Tecnically they are open in the sense that they adopted an open
standard, though not all its philosophy. Thay also write that other
clients are welcome and they explain how to use them. And, finally they
state that they want to talk about federation. This is far more than
what we've seen until now.

>From the google blog: "There's a reason for that openness. We believe
Internet communication networks should openly interoperate, and that
they should include IM and voice. The openness of the Google Talk
service to XMPP clients is just a start. We like SIP too, and we want to
also federate between servers. We've already started working with our
friends at EarthLink and Sipphone to federate our respective real-time
communications services so all our users can talk to each other for
free. If you're interested in federating with us or would like to
interoperate in a way that we have not yet implemented, let us know."

> What other benefit can Google offer? Skype and the other services offer
> more mature feature sets. They all have massive user bases with sticky
> buddy lists. Google has none yet. So, if the IM market is opened up to a
> 'level' playing field, Google has relatively little to loose, and
> everything to gain by being the 'first'.

Indeed they already have a (potential) large userbase: all gmail users ;)
Of course this is not enough. Their client is far less attractive than
other clients (VoIp a part, i haven't tried yet) and so they need
something more. Imho S2S is just one of the aspects: an open protocol
would allow to implement 3rd party services (pubsub, notifications,
chats, any kind of bots, ...) without the need to re-engineer the
protocol or pay expensive licenses.

-- 
Fabio Forno, PhD
Istituto Superiore Mario Boella
Jabber ID: xmpp:ff at kamin.polito.it
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