Google Talk

Google Talk – Jabber based instant messenger with integrated voice chat. Yes, it is indeed based on the IETF’s XMPP, that is compatible with many existing Jabber clients. It is great to see Google embracing the standard. My Google Talk ID is “scott.yang”, and I shall be there in the evenings.

Has its VoIP protocol been analysed and documented somewhere? I wonder whether Google would stick to the standard and use SIP/SIMPLE setup.

Some other questions of mine:

Would it support XMPP’s inter-server protocol, so Jabber users on other servers can chat with Google Talk users?
How does Google Talk fit into Google’s overall strategy? What is the bottom line?
Will we see contextual targeted ads popped up in the middle of a conversation, when Google Talk detected certain keywords?

More to come…

Update: Found some of my answers on Google Talk’s developer info.

5. What protocols are used for voice calls?

Google Talk supports a custom XMPP-based signaling protocol and peer-to-peer communication mechanism. We will fully document this protocol. In the near future, we plan to support SIP signaling.

So the voice is actually embedded inside XMPP’s XML packets at the moment, streaming across HTTP proxy. Not very efficient I’ll say :) But it does manage to penetrate through our firewall.

There are also heaps of info on that page. It says at the bottom of the page:

3. Do you plan to support the Google Talk client on other platforms?

We look forward to the Google Talk client supporting Linux and Mac OSX in the future.

Oh yeah. Time to dump Skype :)

Category: General | Wed, 24 August 2005 4:36 pm

Tags: Google, Jabber

Comments

Posted by timhu on Wed, 24 August 2005 10:04 pm

can i use google talk as my jabber server? (and thus no need to run my own server ?)

Posted by scotty on Wed, 24 August 2005 10:08 pm

One issue is that Google does not any gateway interface with other IM network, therefore you cannot connect to an ICQ, Yahoo or MSN client, like how you can if you are using other public Jabber server, or rolling your own.

But by basing their protocol to XMPP, they can if they want to.

Posted by Jon Mark on Thu, 25 August 2005 2:19 pm

What client are you using? I’ve read their instructions for using gaim but I can’t connect to their server. I know the username/password is correct…..

Posted by scotty on Thu, 25 August 2005 3:18 pm

I use the Google Talk client.

I have not managed to use a regular Jabber client to connect to it yet, as my favourite client does not support XMPP over TLS.