January 18, 2006

It's Official : Open federation for Google Talk

Official Google Blog: Open federation for Google Talk

We've just announced open federation for the Google Talk service. What does that mean, you might be wondering. No, it has nothing to do with Star Trek. "Open federation" is technical jargon for when people on different services can talk to each other. For example, email is a federated system. You might have a .edu address and I have a Gmail address, but you and I can still exchange email. The same for the phone: there's nothing that prevents Cingular users from talking to Sprint users.

While this news was expected, the fact that this announcement has been officially made means several things:

* A major presence player has chosen to focus on XMPP (Jabber) and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, see this post for more information.), the two major open standards for communication via XML messaging, and voice, respectively.
* Any client, server, component, or code library that implements Jabber or SIP can interact with Google talk.
* The open standards movement just got a HUGE jolt that should ignite some serious investment of cash flow into applications that extend upon XMPP and SIP
* The other IM folks need to think long and hard about whether or not this presents enough of a threat to their own IM networks to warrant adding support for XMPP.

In regards to SIP, believe it or not, Microsoft was the first major company to implement an SIP-based telephony product in Windows Messenger. They've had support for four or five years if I'm remembering correctly. Although, in quickly looking I don't see any real signs of life of the Voice.NET project, which was one of the projects that implemented integrated support for SIP... anyone know if thats now dead? Anyway, not a huge concern, and could have very well been absorbed into the Windows or .NET Messenger projects (the second seems likely.) In fact there's a version of Windows Messenger (different from MSN Messenger... not sure if MSN Messenger implements SIP or not... but thats not of major concern, as the provided links points to a version that supports .NET messenger service, which I believe, although I need to check to be absolutely certain, is the service that MSN Messenger uses.) which provides direct support for .NET Messenger service, SIP, and Exchange 2000, and as such, should allow you to communicate with any users of MSN Messenger, SIP-enabled client (via a server such as Asterisk*), as well as through Exchange 2000. Very nice and VERY extensible from a programmabilty standpoint. Thats a tough package to beat!

HINT: With MS already providing support, Google now providing support, and FANTASTIC clients already in place such as the GizmoProject (which I will use quite often... it kicks Skypes A$$ -- the above linked SIP post will explain more), and Asterisk* or Windows Live Communications Server providing the necessary server-side support, do you think that it might be a good idea to start building integrated support for SIP, or use the exposed API's from any of the above to build IP-based telephony into existing or future applications? Probably a good idea, huh ;).

A quick note: I always find it funny that the areas of MS that provide support for open standards tend to be ignored or conveniently overlooked by the anti-MS-folks/open standards advocates.

Anyway, the question mark that remains through all of this is will MSN and Yahoo follow suit? Maybe I'm being naive here, but I would think that with a 5% ownership now of AOL, gaining support for users of the AIM network is a no brainer. In fact the work for this has already been done and is available as a gateway for corporate users already. Whats also worth mentioning is the fact that Microsoft’s Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 and Jabber Inc.'s Extensible Communications Platform already have gateway support for their customers to communicate across application lines. See this announcement for more details.

Actually, with all of the above, coupled with the recent announcment that Microsoft and Yahoo! had come to terms to allow intercommunication between users of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, coupled with existing Jabber/MS and Jabber/AIM gateways in place, adding Google to the mix (and the fact that they own (or soon will, anyway) 5% of AOL) should it just be a given that in the not to distant future interoperation of IM and Voice clients from all major IM and IP-based Voice providers has nothing to do whether this will happen, and instead when (stealing a quote from Paul Graham found in the article I linked to in the previous post regarding Lists)?

Seems like it to me.

What about Skype? That's their choice... its their funeral if they don't, so I'll leave that one alone for now.

Oh, one last note... Through the good work of Eve Maler and her colleagues at both Sun and Microsoft, we will be given support of SAML via Passport (how many 100's of millions of Passport users are there?) as well as interop between Microsoft's .NET Windows Communication Foundation and Java. Through my own recent studies, and through recent email and conversation, it has become obvious to me that SAML and the other web services specifications provided by the good folks of the Liberty Alliance are by FAR and BEYOND the future of secured identity web services interopt via single sign-on mechanisms. Does anybody else make the obvious connection? ;) :D

Regarding Google: In thinking through this, I would almost go as far as suggesting that Google is a bit late to the XMPP/SIP game... While doing a good job of promoting the fact that they are going this direction (not a bad thing, I'm in no way suggesting this is anything but a good thing on Googles behalf), in reality, did they even have a choice?

Maybe not, but either way, it really doesn't matter as I think we can safely now state that through various mechanisms, all the pieces are in place and XMPP and SIP are the future of web-based messaging and voice communications.

Enjoy your XMPP and SIP-enhanced Day!