AOL Adopting Jabber (XMPP)

sander writes to tell us that AOL seems to have decided to make their AIM and ICQ services compatible with XMPP. A test server is up at xmpp.oscar.aol.com, and while it's still buggy most major Jabber clients seem to work.

makes sense to me

This seems like a reasonable move. It's not like sticking with their old protocol got them anything. They get more kudos and better interoperability with other networks by switching to a open protocol.

Very Newsworthy

Well at least for those of us who've been around long enough to remember how badly AOL fought against opening up their services. The cat and mouse games of the early 2000s with a workaround being discovered and AOL closing it are long gone at this point. It is also interesting because the internet is now starting to move into an open direction. I can remember when AOL users and AIM users could not see each other. This was done to entice people to pay for AOL service. Slowly this eroded, and AIM was able to access AOL screennames. AOL always saw its chat base as it's main way to rake people into its service. With the actual AOL business model of old all but effectively dead (I say that, but I know there are millions who still cough up for a service that is free) they had no incentive to keep things closed.

Re:

Wasn't AOL/AIM also listed as one of the backers of the OpenID standard as well? So you can log into AIM using an open standard, then converse using an open standard. They now seem to be at least as open as Google about it all.

Yes, the AIM of old was ver

Re:

Maybe they should start distributing a rebranded version of Pidgin as their client. Sort of complete the circle.

Re:Very Newsworthy

Maybe they should start distributing a rebranded version of Pidgin as their client. Sort of complete the circle.

They can call it Gaim.

Closed Network no more

This is big and is part of a trend. Open standards are replacing proprietary protocols. Companies are starting to see the advantage of being open and not closed. I am happy to see this.

AOL's passive aggressive attention to IM

I was introduced to IM through ICQ back before AIM existed. I remember Aim being ok, but ICQ was much better...well naturally AOL bought mirabilis for 300M-odd dollars way back when and then did the "standard operating procedure" (see the story of Netscape, Nullsoft, et al) of just letting it fester without updates while they pushed their product.

AIM was pretty much the only game in town after that for me...I had my people on AIM, and didn't see any reason to move to yahoo, let alone Msn.

Then everything seemed to stay the same for liek 5 years. The only thing AOL really seemed to be working on was adding loud video ads and fighting against the people who tried to make their crap usable -- like deadaim and it's ilk, gaim, etc.

Over the past seemingly decade, there was talk of cross-network integration...a la msn meets aim, etc. As far as I got was logging into multiple networks in gaim--which is NOT what I was hoping for.

Then google finally put out google talk, a great implementation. Easy enough for my parents to use, no ads....less spyware concern because google doesn't have an evil time warner overlord. And there's a web version of gtalk which beats the PANTs off of the aol crapfest they've called aim express. That's good for those who run different OSes or who don't want to be committed to installing software locally. To their credit aol did put out some token linux release, which i appreciated.

Call me old school but I like the TSR windows client. I don't want my IMs getting lost in browser tabs...I wish they'd port it to linux.

Anyway I read todays news as AOL is losing customers, so they're finally getting their protocol straight and using a standard.

Anyway, Google. PLEASE, please please grab AOl off of time warner...they've been dying to get rid of it, although they're too proud to admit it. Take their user base and merge it with yours. Get rid of their crap....get the media company bias out of their products...I'll take google's signature embedded ads over just about anything that's ever come out of AOL

While you're at it, take nullsoft too...and release all the source code....it might be best to release the code from before the AOL merger, btw.

Client only, or S2S as well?

the real question is -- are they going to support XMPP S2S (server to server federation)? Currently it looks like port xmpp.oscar.aol.com:5269 is NOT accepting connections (that's the XMPP S2S port).

Without S2S, this announcement is pretty much useless -- I mean, sure I can use my jabber client against AOL instead of the AOL-branded one, but I pretty much can do that already via the reverse-engineered joscar libraries (e.g. libgaim)

Re:Client only, or S2S as well?

Yes, GTalk was closed for a few months and then they opened it up for S2S. In Fact, I talk to all my friends on GTALK via S2S from personal XMPP (Jabber) server.

They are not even publishing the correct DNS SRV records yet for AOL.

> _jabber._tcp.aol.com

*** dnsserver can't find _jabber._tcp.aol.com: Non-existent domain
> _xmpp-client._tcp.aol.com

*** dnsserver can't find _xmpp-client._tcp.aol.com: Non-existent domain
> _xmpp-server._tcp.aol.com

*** dnsserver can't find _xmpp-server._tcp.aol.com: Non-existent domain

Universal SPIM for everyone!

It's great that AOL is finally going to speak the industry-standard XMPP. Now instant messaging will be as universal as email is today. And you know what that means...

If you have a Jabber account anywhere, be prepared to start receiving lots of spim [wikipedia.org] all day, every day. And don't simply think that you'll get away with not allowing buddies on your list without accepting an invitation. Spimmers don't do business that way. They simply put their advertisement in the invitation so you've already read it by the time you decline the invite.

Viagra ads, mortgage scams, pump and dump stocks ... all day, every day, but now it pops up right into the middle of your screen. Happy Happy!!

Re:Address format?

From the screen shots, it looks like: [e-mail] and [e-mail]

Re:Address format?

Man, I have to feel sorry for [e-mail].
I've been using that account for various spammy registrations since 1998.

3 cheers for Bob!

Re:GTalk Compatability

AIM support in GMail Chat (not the GTalk client) still uses the standard AIM protocol, not XMPP. In order to use it, you must have an AIM account. If AOL eventually fully support XMPP what that will mean is that you can use your XMPP account to chat with AIM users directly without having an AIM account yourself.

Re:GTalk Compatability

And as such, this is a clear admission that Google Talk was putting a serious dent in their business. They had no interest in standards until they had competition, but now that they do, they'll certainly want to make sure that their competition isn't the only one that can claim universal access (which is exactly what Google can claim now for their Web-based client).

Re:

I'd be pretty surprised if Google Talk was putting a dent in their business. It's probably one of the other big-three--Yahoo! Instant Messanger, and MSN Messenger. By moving to XMPP, AOL can effectively increase their userbase to include anyone also usin

Re:

No, this actually _is_ Jabber, while Googles AIM access isnt. Google just provides a client you can use to access AIM, but using AOL's oscar protocol. You cant use Google's AIM access with a client you choose, but here you can. The difference is that with

Re:

It appears that they haven't implemented server-to-server connections yet so that's not the case now. However all they have to do is throw the switch so to speak. It would be a wonderful thing if AIM migrated fully to xmpp.

-- Ecks

Re:

maybe they don't want to maintain the old protocol forever?

XMPP has well maintained, free, server software, and has the added benefit of things like jingle (voice), and a rather large user base (GTalk & Jabber). Considering all they want is for users t

Re:but......why?

I've currently got pidgin running and its talking to people over AIM...its talking to people on MSN...and its talking back into my corporate jabber network over the VPN...

Yes, but you have to have an account for each and every one of those. You also can't hold a group session between your AIM friends, your MSN friends, and your co-workers, can you?

XMPP would allow you to have a jabber account on your corporate network, and talk to somebody on AIM, ICQ, or another company's japper network, without having to have accounts on those servers. Think of it like email, you have [e-mail], and I have [e-mail], but you can send me an email without signing up with myisp.com. Well now we get the same flexibility with IM. The only thing I see missing is an MX-like DNS record for IM servers.

Re:

There is such a record in the case of Jabber; it uses the SRV record type. For instance:

$ host -t SRV _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 20 0 5269 x

Re:

I got it working in pidgin, just the usual values you would expect.

It did take a while (minutes) to connect and prompt for password though, I suspect it's being hit pretty hard.

Re:Huzzah

Finally I will only need to be connected to one IM network. _My own_. Up to now you had to pretty much put up with either MSN logging your conversations or AOL logging them.

One of the great things about Google turning on server 2 server for GTalk is that it is now possible to run your own IM server (as you might run your own mail server) and network interconnection just works.

And then you still have AOL, MSN, or Google logging your chats, if you're talking to someone on one of their networks. If you're the only person using your chat server, it's really like just using a very complicated client program.

E.g., if you're "[e-mail]" and you run a XMPP server at messaging.homenetwork.net, but all the people you talk to are on Google or AOL, every message you send goes from your client, through messaging.homenetwork.net, and then over to Google's or AOL's servers (where presumably they log them), before going to the destination.

Unless you can convince your friends to use your chat server (messaging.homenetwork.net) rather than AOL's/Google's, you're not getting any additional privacy.

Frankly, I think privacy isn't really the goal we should be aiming for with this. If you want privacy, get OTR encryption (the easiest way is just to use Adium on the Mac), and then it doesn't matter quite so much whose servers the messages are passing through. The switch from OSCAR to XMPP is all about interoperability.

Re:

If AOL moving to XMPP is hell freezing over... MSN moving to XMPP would be putting hell in an Einstein-Boseman state.

I other words, not bloody likely.

Re:Pundits, please speak up

It means that [e-mail] (seriously, who uses it anymore?) can now IM to [e-mail], and vice versa.

A longer explanation: IM has, historically, been a walled garden [wikipedia.org]. That is, if you have MSN Messenger (or "Windows Messenger"), I need to have MSN Messenger in order to IM you. If I have Yahoo Messenger, we can't communicate.

There are ways around this, none of them very good. You could just install Yahoo Messenger also, and AIM, and that will cover almost everyone. (Almost -- there's still Gadu-Gadu, WinPopup, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC...)

IRC is a bit better, actually, because at least there's a standard protocol. Anyone can setup an IRC server, or write their own IRC client. If you're on Windows, you can just download mIRC and connect to anyone. (I like irssi on Linux and MacIRSSI on OS X.) But it's still a walled garden, in that you can't connect to EFnet and talk to people -- in rooms or in private messages -- who are on DALnet. (Or Freenode, or...)

But not everything is a walled garden. Email, for instance -- anyone can register a domain, setup a mailserver, and provide email for themselves, for friends, or for money. If you're a poor sap who has an @aol.com email address, I don't have to do anything special to be able to send mail to you from my @gmail.com address, or from my own domain.

All it takes for email to work is a domain name and a mailserver. And a mailserver can be any computer that's online all the time. Not that I recommend doing it yourself, just saying that email is wholly and completely democratized.

Well, that's what Jabber/XMPP is all about. Not only is the chat/IM protocol open, but Jabber servers can be configured to talk to other Jabber servers -- to arbitrarily connect to each other. So you can be on AOL Instant Messenger, and I can be on Google Talk, but we can add each other to our buddy lists and communicate. Not because there's any kind of big deal with AOL and Google, but because they both speak Jabber. And like email, I can setup my own Jabber server.

Re:What about Jingle?

From the web page:

Jingle is an extension to the Jabber/XMPP protocol, to allow for peer-to-peer (p2p) signalling for multimedia interactions such as voice or video. It was designed by Google and the XMPP Standards Foundation. The multimedia content itself can be delivered using the Real-time Transport Protocol, with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) for NAT traversal. As of January 26 2007, the Jingle standards are marked as being experimental, meaning that it has not yet been approved by the XMPP Standards Foundation.

... what that means is ... it is the standard for voice of XMPP is just not 100% locked in stone yet.