In the next few days, Google and AOL are working together to change the way you connect to AIM buddies within Gmail. After this change, Gmail and AIM users can talk directly to each other without having to log into both services (you will no longer be able to log into AIM within Gmail's "Chat" section).
It's nice to know that AIM and Gmail Chat (Google Talk) will finally become interoperable and the Gmail integration will no longer be necessary. Back in 2005, Google and AOL announced that "Google Talk users and AIM users will be able to communicate with one another" and two years later Gmail Chat integrated with AIM, but they didn't become interoperable.
{ Thanks, Josh. }
I foresee the mythical google social network at io. right now the only way that would be possible is for users to enter all the aim screen names into their google contacts. while that isn't that much of a problem to do, i think it would be greatly overlooked by many users unless there were a facebook like network where people could add their screen names to their profiles
ReplyDeleteaccording to the rumors there will not no social announcement at IO.
ReplyDeleteI suspect we will be getting a load of small announcements over the coming year. But not big launch of a new website/service with fireworks and ground speeches from Google on how they going to conquer the world or at least the social media part of it.
I don't get it. How is this different than what we already have? I look to the left column in my gmail page and there's my Google Talk pane with my AIM login and contacts. It has always been that way.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that AIM is moving to XMPP? That would be great.
ReplyDeleteI dream of the day that all the major webmail/IM vendors get together and build an open, federated IM/social network to battle Facebook. OneSocialWeb or similar would work. Heck, adapt the now defunct Wave protocol. Guys, get off your butts and fight your common enemy. Facebook is now people's e-mail host, chat client, photo sharing platform, casual gaming portal, and blogging and microblogging platform.
How much longer can you guys wait without pushing back?
AIM is ebing used less and less anyway.
ReplyDeleteThey do not move to XMPP. The just open a server-to-server-(xmpp-)gateway for Google Talk. That's it.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting question is: What's about ICQ. There is an interoperability between ICQ and AIM. There will be an interoperability between AIM and XMPP. So. What's about ICQ↔XMPP
This actually means that AIM finally supports XMPP:
ReplyDelete$ dig +short srv _xmpp-server._tcp.aol.com
0 1 5269 xmpp.gxmpp.oscar.aol.com.
Unfortunately there's neither a SRV resource record for XMPP clients in their zone data nor does the XMPP server seem to be federated.
The blog post fails to mention the fine print. You may want to actually read the URL contained in the IM, here it is for convenience:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.aim.com/google-chat-changes
1) You will never have your online status shown to buddies if you use GMail's client.
2) "To continue showing your online state ("Available," "Away," etc.) and be reachable by both your AIM and Gmail contacts, use the latest AIM desktop or mobile clients. AIM lets you connect with not only people you know on AIM, but also Google Talk/Gmail contacts (and Facebook friends)."
This feels more like AOL bumping someone else out of their sandbox. It's theirs to do what they want with it, but do not be misled into believing that they're doing GMail users any favors.
That's how I read it too, Anon@5:47. This sounds like I'm being forced to use AIM only and told its an improvement.
ReplyDeleteFor God's sake Google, I don't want lame AIM integration, I want proper Jabber "Priority" support; it's the killer feature IMs with multiple location support is missing
ReplyDeleteUseful information like this one must be kept and maintained so I will put this one on my bookmark list. Thanks for this wonderful post and hoping to see more of this.
ReplyDeleteThis is terrible; I am constantly getting "add buddy" requests on Gtalk for people on my AIM list. I actually don't want this to happen and there is no way to disable it. Even though I click deny, they keep coming up for the same people. Just dumb.
ReplyDeleteFor those who were wondering, yes this does mean AIM is using XMPP (evidence: http://www.aim.com/xmpp), but right now it's "limited to select partners".
ReplyDeleteWhich likely means that for now they're working with a whitelist to let 3rd party servers communicate with them.
The good part here though is they say "currently limited", so it sounds like they plan to support XMPP federation fully in the long run.
"Gmail integration will no longer be necessary"
ReplyDeletebullcrap, it barely works as well...for me at least D:
"This is terrible; I am constantly getting "add buddy" requests on Gtalk for people on my AIM list. I actually don't want this to happen and there is no way to disable it. Even though I click deny, they keep coming up for the same people. Just dumb."
ReplyDeleteDitto this. Any help for the less tech savy to make it stop notifying me in the middle of the night?
This is absolutely horrible! Is there anyway to disable this integration?
ReplyDeleteNow I constantly get the same friend requests only on Gtalk now from people I don't know. I have friends on AIM and on Gtalk so I've always run both. Now I get 2 windows for every message from an AIM user. This sucks.