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Nothing at all; this was a decision made by the Hangouts team. The XMPP change has to do with the NIH syndrome a lot of Google engineers suffer from, combined w

Nothing at all; this was a decision made by the Hangouts team. The XMPP change has to do with the NIH syndrome a lot of Google engineers suffer from, combined with the incompetence of the Hangouts PM, Kate Cushing. Disclaimer: I work for Google.

zanny 12y ago
But google invented Jingle, and in the XMPP space I can't imagine they didn't have a dominate authority. And you can add whatever extensions you want to XMPP, standard or not.
- ralphm 12y ago
  Google did start Jingle and large part of their work ended up in the Jingle standards at the XMPP Standards Foundation. However, Google Talk and the old Hangouts took quite a while to move to the standardized version, and were never fully compliant. Also, in other areas, Google never quite interacted with the community and left major issues unresolved. Basically all of the issues, perceived flaws or missing features attributed to XMPP in the old implementation of Hangouts were either misinformed or have seen development or new specifications in the XSF. Google never contributed to such discussions, with the exception of individual Googlers helping with Domain Name Associations (DNA, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05).
zx2c4 12y ago
So far as I can see, the Hangouts implementation still uses XMPP, and even sends some federated messages to other servers. It looks like there has been some kind of code added to specifically block the functionality for which code already exists.
- drdaeman 12y ago
  This is interesting. Could you publish your findings, going a bit more with details?
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  How are you able to sniff Hangouts traffic?
zx2c4 12y ago
> the incompetence of the Hangouts PM, Kate Cushing Thanks for the pointer to here. Letter writing campaign to Kate Cushing worthwhile?
- untog 12y ago
  Remind me to never be a PM for Google.
- mihai_ionic 12y ago
  I've dropped her a message (kcushing at google dot com) and I suggest you do the same.
DavidNielsen 12y ago
It is my understanding that XMPP also presents a problem with regards to mobile due to inefficient design from a power usage point of view. I could certainly see how that would be reason to look into fixing or outright replacing XMPP but not opening the replacement protocol is just shameful.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  Indeed. Take a look at this insightful blogpost: http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/ http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/
- claudius 12y ago
  They are still supporting XMPP for c2s connections, though; i.e. if you are on a phone, you can use XMPP to connect to Google. What they don’t support is s2s, which – unless you somehow run your own XMPP server on your phone – has nothing whatsoever to do with mobile :) FWIW, they could “easily” build a mobile client that connects to Google via some nonstandard protocol which preserves energy on the phone while being mapped to the standard XMPP protocol from Google onwards.
  - MattJ100 12y ago
    Funnily enough, that's exactly what they did do, back in 2008 :) Originally Android included an XMPP API that applications could use to connect to Google and other XMPP services. This got replaced by a Google Talk-specific API at the same time they switched to a proprietary protocol. E.g. http://blog.kosmokaryote.org/2008/02/google-cannot-be-my-champion.html http://blog.kosmokaryote.org/2008/02/google-cannot-be-my-cha...
- MattJ100 12y ago
  Naive implementations of XMPP on mobile can indeed get quite power hungry, but it doesn't have to be that way. Thankfully I've seen quite a bit of interest lately from mobile clients who wish to improve on this - all the resources are out there. Some links: - http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0286.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0286.html - http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html - http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html XEP-0198 is currently gaining adoption quite nicely for example, it allows for reliable streams (resume them without message loss or the need to re-sync everything if you get disconnected).

zanny 12y ago

But google invented Jingle, and in the XMPP space I can't imagine they didn't have a dominate authority. And you can add whatever extensions you want to XMPP, standard or not.

ralphm 12y ago
Google did start Jingle and large part of their work ended up in the Jingle standards at the XMPP Standards Foundation. However, Google Talk and the old Hangouts took quite a while to move to the standardized version, and were never fully compliant. Also, in other areas, Google never quite interacted with the community and left major issues unresolved. Basically all of the issues, perceived flaws or missing features attributed to XMPP in the old implementation of Hangouts were either misinformed or have seen development or new specifications in the XSF. Google never contributed to such discussions, with the exception of individual Googlers helping with Domain Name Associations (DNA, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-05).

zx2c4 12y ago

So far as I can see, the Hangouts implementation still uses XMPP, and even sends some federated messages to other servers. It looks like there has been some kind of code added to specifically block the functionality for which code already exists.

drdaeman 12y ago
This is interesting. Could you publish your findings, going a bit more with details?
voltagex_ 12y ago
How are you able to sniff Hangouts traffic?

zx2c4 12y ago

> the incompetence of the Hangouts PM, Kate Cushing Thanks for the pointer to here. Letter writing campaign to Kate Cushing worthwhile?

untog 12y ago
Remind me to never be a PM for Google.
mihai_ionic 12y ago
I've dropped her a message (kcushing at google dot com) and I suggest you do the same.

DavidNielsen 12y ago

It is my understanding that XMPP also presents a problem with regards to mobile due to inefficient design from a power usage point of view. I could certainly see how that would be reason to look into fixing or outright replacing XMPP but not opening the replacement protocol is just shameful.

scrollaway 12y ago
Indeed. Take a look at this insightful blogpost: http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/ http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/
claudius 12y ago
They are still supporting XMPP for c2s connections, though; i.e. if you are on a phone, you can use XMPP to connect to Google. What they don’t support is s2s, which – unless you somehow run your own XMPP server on your phone – has nothing whatsoever to do with mobile :) FWIW, they could “easily” build a mobile client that connects to Google via some nonstandard protocol which preserves energy on the phone while being mapped to the standard XMPP protocol from Google onwards.
- MattJ100 12y ago
  Funnily enough, that's exactly what they did do, back in 2008 :) Originally Android included an XMPP API that applications could use to connect to Google and other XMPP services. This got replaced by a Google Talk-specific API at the same time they switched to a proprietary protocol. E.g. http://blog.kosmokaryote.org/2008/02/google-cannot-be-my-champion.html http://blog.kosmokaryote.org/2008/02/google-cannot-be-my-cha...
MattJ100 12y ago
Naive implementations of XMPP on mobile can indeed get quite power hungry, but it doesn't have to be that way. Thankfully I've seen quite a bit of interest lately from mobile clients who wish to improve on this - all the resources are out there. Some links: - http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0286.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0286.html - http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html - http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html XEP-0198 is currently gaining adoption quite nicely for example, it allows for reliable streams (resume them without message loss or the need to re-sync everything if you get disconnected).