The much awaited Google Talk federation is live. Gary Burd, the software engineer who works on GTalk writes over on the Google Talk Blog:
I flipped the switch to connect the Google Talk Service to the public XMPP network this morning. Google Talk users can now chat with users on other XMPP services and vice versa.
What this means is that now Google Talk’s XMPP servers can talk to other XMPP servers such as Earthlink and Gizmo Project. (I had written about GTalk-Gizmo Link Up earlier.) I am not sure if those two companies in specific have turned on the features, but essentially if you have your own Jabber server, you could talk to GTalk. Some have already had success in cross-server traffic exchange.
Earthlink confirms that Vling and Google Talk can play IM nice, thanks to the opening of the new federation. “Google has come forward and said they’d like to create a federation with us, and in so doing iron out a process for bringing new companies in to the group,” Earthlink says on its blog.
works great with gizmo project. i just set it up with some gtalk buddies. very seamless. i hope i’ll be able to call gtalk users with gizmo soon too. makes IM more like email…
Hats off and hands on to a great company… Google
I’m assuming that with full interoperability, we will be able to utilize the high quality Gips codecs across the various clients. Can anyone verify this? Earthlink, Gizmo, and Google all use Gips software and codecs.
rick,
just to clarify this is not a voip/sip exchange kind of interop as of now, though i am told that could happen in the future. it is more of an “IM” interoperablity.
Someone just mentioned why this is a big deal? Well it is the first sign of interopwe have seen in the highly siloed world of instant messaging. Yahoo-Microsoft are still talking about it, and well, this is good. What if every domain owner ran a jabber server of their own (dreamhost lets you do that) and now can talk with a decent sized community. maybe just me, i do find this a positive step forward.
Thanks Om, I understand that. I’m taking a step ahead in the direction of full interop with voice.
I don’t see a Mac or Linux version. Am I looking in the right place?
well like you i am hoping that voice interop comes soon. rick, i know gizmo is working on something, but its not going to be any time soon.
esme
there are no linux/mac clients from google. however if you use adium or gaim, there is support and also gizmo has a mac/linux client.
Mac and Linux users can use Gizmo Project which will allow them to reach Google Talk users and actually is a much more advanced IM and VOIP product than GoogleTalk. Gizmo Project has smileys, call record, 1 cent a minute calling, virtual numbers, offline messaging, free voicemail, etc.