yanw

Sigh. It's the same anti-Google post on HN again.

Wasn't this a profile piece about the so called "whistleblower" whose "evidence" Google already was confronted with by PM this week?

Hyperbole aside (they won’t drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these standards and failed.

They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly about modernising their infrastructure.

Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts of messaging apps on top of XMPP?

Google was the last one standing, and it just didn't work out.

And why cherry pick “standards”? how about web standard? Chromium is a very big commitment to them.

Edit: I should be more specific as I meant a federated implementation of XMPP.

Why is it not utilized more widely then? foregoing for a minute that everyone is cultivating their own gardens - what are the weaknesses of XMPP that would make it so easily avoidable for most of these apps?

You can always open a Gmail tab.

I think the Chrome app is an excellent cross platform solution (written once, easily maintainable). As for the protocol I don't think it is practical or even possible to built this sort of all encompassing communications platform on top of XMPP (see the competition).

I do hope there will be a Hangouts API.

Serious question: how practical is it to build something like Hangouts that is meant to compete with iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber etc on top of XMPP? is it even possible?

Chrome app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hangouts/nckgahada...

It's still there.

In GTalk's case any XMPP client will do so an official app is almost irrelevant in its case.

Gtalk will still be available though.

"... which users may choose to use instead of Google Talk."

It's just a random outage. iOS won't lose CalDav support since Apple is one of them "whitelisted developers".

Edit: resolved http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=13...

I try to avoid these sorts of submissions, mainly because of their non-content and the subsequent familiar discussion, but somehow they keep reaching the front page.

It’s certainly your prerogative to use whatever you like but the incorrect assertions bother me, especially the prevalent one: “It's because I think that Google is now working against the potential of the open web”.

Here’s a rebuttal in the form of a partial list of links to Google initiatives that exist primarily to advance the “open web”:

http://www.webrtc.org

http://www.chromium.org

And their various web speed efforts:

https://developers.google.com/speed/spdy

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed

And of course:

https://fiber.google.com

I don't think the closure of Google Reader was any indication to the contrary, and all of these are certainly much more important to the web than yet another centralized RSS reader.

Other errors in that post: Chrome never ‘dropped decent RSS support’ as it never supported it to begin with, it was actually Firefox that dropped their support. Also there is no evidence that Reader was closed to “drive users to Google+”, there is no proof nor common sense explanation to support that assertion.

It's not shutting down, not really: http://postini-transition.googleapps.com/

Trollish post. Empty speculation and blatant pageview whoring.

No new features in the latest update but the .apk teardown suggests future functionality: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/04/15/apk-teardown-google-...

They do not "scrape" content on your local machine. They do incorporate stuff on their services including emails, as you mention (OpenTable, Amazon packages, etc).

You can also have this sort of stuff triggerd by desktop searches if you join this "field trial": https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial/

If you've Googled these stocks/companies then they will show up on a Google Now card. Chrome has nothing to do with it, except maybe that you are more likely to be signed in when using Chrome.

So don't joint. No need to be rude about it.

Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery.

Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? and why should they - arguably the least “walled” of said gardens - suffer the "openness" brunt?

The fact that they are not investing in RSS tools doesn't mean they're against them, it's just not in their interest anymore, and so I come to the conclusion that this is yet another Google Reader lament, and I thought we've already had our fill of these on the HN front page.

It’s the same discussion all over again, If you've not found a Reader replacement by now, or at least had your eyes on a couple of replacement candidates then you're just being stubborn.

Google lets you export your feeds and that is why they are not "evil", not because they refuse to indefinitely maintain a service that isn't of interest to them.

Also the crux or that post is an opt in feature that you have to install as a browser extension, if you don't like it then avoid the extension, but then how is it any different than Facebook's 'like' buttons or any of the other social widgets that are cluttering the web?!

Spare me. Name 3 companies that do more for the web than Google.

No one is forcing him or you to use any of these things. It's just another Google Reader lament.

How is that analogy valid?! why install a browser extension when you're not interested in its functionality?

So don't install the extension then.

Who are these low karma users who keep submitting these Google bashing/feigned indignation posts?!