News

Google Talk moves ahead with interoperable networks plan

January 17, 2006

Google has created a milestone by enabling interoperability of its Google (profile, product, service) Talk instant messaging service with other IM and voice services providers supported by XMPP protocol.

When the company launched Google Talk last august, it was compatible with all the applications that support XMPP. During the launch, they announced that they will enable the interoperability of Google Talk with networks that has XMPP at a server-to-server level. Their stance was devised to congregate all XMPP network users, like internet service providers, vendors, etc.

Google Talk is now fully interoperable with EarthLink's Vling instant messaging and voice services. And above that many of the major corporate houses, institutions and individual users are benefiting from it.

Due to reasons of company protocols, the big players in the IM scenario, like American Online and Microsoft have not been able to promote interoperability, which proves to be a great hindrance to many of the IM and voice services users. Google has earlier talked of creating interoperable link with AOL, when the plans for a similar link between Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger came out into the open. But both the plans failed to materialize.

Mike jazaveri, product manager of Google Talk announced that the recent move excludes AOL. EarthLink's director of voice products and engineering, Tom Hsieh, gave the opinion that the interoperability policy initiated by Google Talk is a landmark approach towards improved communications among IM and voice services providers.