Google Talk
I’m signed up to the new Google IM service, Google Talk. Works fine with Gaim. Good work Google for using the open-source Jabber protocol, too. I wonder how Google-client-to-Google-client voice chat works?
Username: stuart.langridge (I don’t actually know whether you need the @gmail.com bit on the end).
Update: it seems that they’re using a custom XMPP thing which they have promised to fully document. Nice.
yeah, the @gmail.com part is actually part of the Jabber ID (used so that people on other jabber networks can talk to you). make sure to include that !
4 hours later
Besides adding a documented protocol of their own their planning on adding SIP support, which is useful since work towards a SIP capable gaim client is already in progress ( http://www.phonegaim.com/ ).
I think google might attract more converts if it uses Jabber’s gateway capabilities and set up some MSN, AIM and ICQ gateways. I have no idea if their are any possible legal hurdles in the way of this though.
5 hours later
I imagine the @gmail.com bit will be necessary once they start adding people who are @earthlink.com and @sipphone.com. It isn’t part of your Jabber ID though, because you don’t have one. Only servers that talk to other Jabber (aka XMPP) servers have Jabber IDs, and Google doesn’t allow you to use servers other than their own (and presumably never will if you aren’t using a server from a provider major enough to sign an agreement with Google).
As to their ‘using Jabber/XMPP‘, that’s true as far as that being the protocol used for Google’s server< ->your client, but that’s as far as the similarity to XMPP goes. The other (most?) important half of the XMPP protocol, XMPP server< ->XMPP server, they don’t, and never will, support. Presumably because of their disappointment in what the attempt to allow users of multiple services to mail each other became (email/SMTP with it’s widespread spam and spoofing).
All of Google’s talk of federation isn’t about joining up to the Jabber network and allowing other people to run XMPP servers; it’s expressing a willingness to partner with other companies to share userbases (and presumably information on those users). Which I suppose is a step up from the other IM companies but is hardly what I would have hoped from Google.
6 days later