[recoiledsnake]

Wait, so Google is dropping XMPP support because Outlook.com is supporting it to allow Gtalk users to chat on Outlook.com, so in order to perpetuate the GMail/GTalk lock-in by caging the Gtalk chat users to GMail, they're dropping standards support and killing access to all XMPP clients in existence including non-Microsoft ones? And they announce this right when Microsoft spent all the time and effort to allow Outlook.com users to chat with Gtalk friends and is rolling out that feature? Am I right? Someone tell me I am wrong!

That sounds unbelievable, coming from the supposedly open company even though it's coming on the heels of them trying lock out millions of Windows Phone users from Youtube by sending a C&D takedown on the app.

I guess open standards don't work when you're the guy trying to lock in users. If Google had a lock-in on Office products, looks like they will ditch "open data" and "open standards" in a heartbeat. They should change their policy to "open when it's convenient for us to flog it for PR purposes, else closed, oh and please store all your office documents on our cloud, we make it really convenient.".

This is not Open vs. Closed anymore, this is Corporations vs. Individuals, except for Mozilla which is becoming less powerful because Google uses its ad dollars to bundle Chrome with Flash, Acrobat and Java updates by default thereby reducing Firefox's share and has the nice side effect of reducing Google's payments to Mozilla for searches.

And Web DRM? Of course it's coming because IE, Chrome and Safari are going to be supporting it fully with 80% marketshare and people will blame Firefox if Netflix doesn't work in it and recommend you switch to Chrome to see movies! iOS, Android and Windows Phone, BBOS will add support for 100% tablet and phone support for the DRM. Firefox and Opera are powerless to stop it. We have already seen this play out with th h.264 HTML5 video support in Chrome fiasco when Google said it would drop H.264 from Chrome but did not and Mozilla was left holding the short end of the stick and had to recently had to eat crow and add support for H264. The web is owned by the corporates, not individuals anymore, there was some hope when Firefox was at 40%, not anymore. And we all willingly gave them the power by believing in "open" and "do no evil" and switching in droves.

I can picture Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix etc executives sitting at a bar and giving toast to each other and laughing while we whine and debate fruitlessly with vitriol on these forums. All their stock valuations are up recently!

[codeka]

> That sounds unbelievable

It's unbelievable because it's not true. They're dropping XMPP federation, which outlook.com never used anyway.

What outlook.com has done is they've added an XMPP client that lets you connect to Google's servers in order to send chat messages to GTalk users. That's still going to work.

Also note that what Microsoft have done is allow outlook.com users to communicate with GTalk users, but not the other way around.

[sp332]

They dropped XMPP federation a couple of months ago. The new move is away from XMPP entirely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714557

[recoiledsnake]

This thread says otherwise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714681

[icebraining]

trying to lock out millions of Windows Phone users from Youtube by sending a C&D takedown on the app

Open browser → type youtube.com. How exactly are they "locked out"? Please stop throwing FUD; whether they should provide API access is a fair discussion, but let's not make stuff up.

[Metrop0218]

Locked out is definitely way too strong of a phrase. "Make it less comfortable to use" is a bit closer to truth

[VikingCoder]

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?

[adrinavarro]

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 protocol for chatting.

[sp332]

If they're not using XMPP, they should publish their new protocol and let other clients interface with it.

[woof]

Are you implying they have tried (with xmpp-extensions)?

But yes, they are evil.

[mtgx]

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

[cooldeal]

The company with half the top Phds and best engineers in the world and billions in profit every quarter is unable to create an open extension to XMPP to accomplish those and fallback gracefully if it's not supported? You really believe that?

You could assemble a team of 30 random HN posters and they would be able to do that.

So, I think they could do it, if and only if they wanted to. But they didn't and they themselves said it was because they didn't want to be open.

[wslh]

> I guess open standards don't work when you're the guy trying to lock in users.

That's obvious for Google too. They don't open source their search engine (or even Google Reader!). They open source a browser and an operating system to sell other stuff. For Google open source is a weapon.

[Samuel_Michon]

“They open source a browser and an operating system to sell other stuff.”

No, those were already open source before Google got involved, so Google didn’t really have a choice.

[mtgx]

Microsoft actually did not want to open the .doc format. I believe they were forced to do it.

[siamore]

Who forced them? I can't find it on wikipedia, in a google search or microsoft's site all I found was

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Open_Specification_Pr...

I even checked the references, the MS page adds nothing to wikipedia's info in this matter

http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/o...

[capo]

GTalk is still as is.

As for YouTube it is and always have been available on the web for windows phone.

Microsoft in clear violation of Google's TOS used undocumented APIs and stripped ads from YouTube and now they have the audacity to say that they would have complied by the TOS if it suited them better.

Please take your anti-Google (probably Microsoft sponsored astroturf) elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=recoiledsnake

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=recoiledsnake

These submission are a honeypot for your sort.

[iamshs]

Except, Microsoft did not strip ads from the videos. They said yesterday that they will be happy to serve ads if Google lets them access. And please, let the legal departments decide if it is a clear violation or not. Do not take a decision on your own.

I think you are the one who is astro-turfing here, if i apply the finger pointing criteria to you too. It is better if you reply to the argument leaving your personal preferences neatly tucked in.

[untog]

You know, saying that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is "probably Microsoft sponsored astroturf" just makes me picture you with a tin foil hat on your head.

Sometimes the truth is a lot simpler than you're thinking it is. You write a lot of posts that are pro-Google. Are you sponsored by Google?!?!?

[threeseed]

How about attacking the argument instead of the person ?

Trying to paint this black/white picture of someone just because they disagree with you is frankly pathetic.

[donalmacc]

Eh... https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=capo Something about the pot calling the kettle black? You don't work for google by any chance do you?

[CloudNine]

Can we comment on the stories and not the commenters themselves? What is this? A witch hunt?