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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Google better buy it, and convert it into normal XMPP service. Otherwise this sickness will just grow more.

>At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That’s our product and that’s our passion.

There is such thing - XMPP. Just create a reliable federated (and standard compliant!) service, and give people a decent client with audio/video XMPP/Jingle calling capabilities. Why their passion has to revolve around gutting security in the process of creating a non compliant walled IM abomination is really puzzling.

> Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.

What about your identity being in the picture? Shouldn't they warn their users that they offer an insecure and identity leak / theft prone service?

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XMPP performance on mobile platforms, especially on subpar networks, is pretty bad. It's designed for always-on networks and is a huge battery drain even if you can maintain that connection.

Whatsapp uses XMPP nevertheless. That's not the problem. The problem is that it modifies it, to make it non compliant, it doesn't federate and it also offers no way to control your user name and password, using phone hardware identity instead.

There are several ways to address XMPP energy drain, some of which were proposed as XEPs. Google uses one of such methods (google queue). Facebook uses another.

Example: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38943

XMPP is used for Facebook Messager, Google Talk and even WhatsApp. Just WhatsApp adds proprietary options to it and does some weird key exchange on first signup. So there is e.g. no chance to log in from your computer or simultaneously running it on multiple devices.

You are right, a permanent connection isn't that great on mobile phones, but as a custom XMPP service you could just use push technology like every other app, too. That's what e.g. Google and Facebook are doing.

Beejive and IM+, two common mobile IM apps with XMPP support, are doing this, too. The only downside is, that since they don't want to store you credentials, you have to run the app to reconnect to your XMPP server and delegate that connection to their push servers. This is just a bit annoying when either jabber.org or their servers have connection errors.

Hahahaha....Google used to have XMPP too, you know, but the Google Talk servers move more and more away from it every day. Hell, the classes for using Google Talk in the Android beta used to have XMPP in their class names, then Google Talk, then they were made private all together. If you think Google would make anything into normal XMPP you just don't know much about the space.

I don't see them moving away much. They had problems with federated invites lately, but they fixed it already.

Just to add, their recent invite blockade was discussed by them on a public mailing list.

Right, even though usually Google is very hard to reach on similar issues.

Google is very hard to reach on issues altogether. As a policy, it seems, they make sure the customer doesn't get a chance of human interaction - even the paying ones - and even though the experience is eating(other than monetary loss) the customer they go on doing that anyway.

I never understood that. They should have enough money to offer decent support.

Link for the curious, follow link to public mailing list:

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/google-backslides-on-feder...

Since WhatsApp is a company that just recently discovered SSL and learned that you shouldn't use the IMEI number to generate the account password ... everything just can become better. They are also successfully ignoring support things like multiple devices or a client for the computer.

Those who file such requests are better off ignoring Whatsapp in return and signing up with any normal XMPP service ;)

Though, I believe (and feel the need for) a desktop app is going to be one huge leap that will leave behind a lot of competitors both on desktop and mobile) by miles, I think their decision not to jump on desktop is a matter of focus and direction. They still have a lot to do on the mobile.

For instance, I would love to break free from Google Talk and essentially make my email and IM divorce each other. I don't want them to be together until I can take my IM connections, history, transcript to some other provider(as in exporting and without the need of adding all IM connections again - which is impossible as of now) like email files and start afresh with the same address.

Facebook chat is worse. MS is melting all of their service in one pan it seems and anyway apps like Skype should not be encouraged(performance!).

So, I would love an app that is on every mobile(I don't think there's anything else other than WhatsApp) and which comes to every desktop or can come.

> For instance, I would love to break free from Google Talk and essentially make my email and IM divorce each other. I don't want them to be together until I can take my IM connections, history, transcript to some other provider(as in exporting and without the need of adding all IM connections again - which is impossible as of now) like email files and start afresh with the same address.

Why is it impossible to divorce them, and what stops you from doing it? For example, you can use such method:

1. Create an account on any federated XMPP server (there are many, for example DuckDuckGo has one: https://duck.co/topic/duckduckgo-s-new-public-xmpp-jabber-se... ) or choose any to your liking.

Google Talk is federated, so you'll be able to communicate with its users being a user of other federated server (like the above).

2. Let your contacts know that you are switching XMPP server, and send them authorization request from the new XMPP ID.

3. When they accept, remove them from the old XMPP ID contacts.

Following this process will require you having both IDs logged in your client for a while, so you could communicate with all contacts, but when you'll transfer them all - you can delete the first account and continue with just the second one.

Automating it all could be nice (with something like this http://el-tramo.be/blog/sluift/ ), but manual method works too without much stress, unless your contact list is really huge, then automation seems like the most sensible way.

Yes, that is true and I even had it on my <username>@jabber.org. Not all but some contacts were there, was adding more. I forgot my password - it stopped working(I save passwords in LastPass and that's one incidence so not sure whose fault). I didn't have an email associated with that Jabber a/c. I lost all.

What I mean by moving connections was removing the need to add each individual IM/XMPP contact again. What I meant was that somehow the connection could move with my XMPP ID that is also an email address on my own domain. In a way that I don't have to add every single WhatsApp friend again. I just have to prove that it's the same mobile number.

It has it's drawbacks. When I activated my new prepaid number I used to get WhatApp pings from people I didn't know and I used to send pings to people who had got my friends' abandoned/deactivated numbers. I emailed WhatsApp and ofcourse never heard from them.

Whatsapp isn't federated anyway, so you can forget about any flexibility and much choice there like contacting Google Talk users. Whatsapp deserves to be completely ignored. If you want the most control, you can always just run your own XMPP server somewhere (ejabberd is pretty nice), with you being the only user, and federate with the rest of the XMPP universe. You'll need a few things to set up like SSL certificate and etc. but it's doable.

I think the part you are missing and what Whatsapp's engineers are referring to is Google storing all your private conversations and data mining them for information to target you with ads. Whatsapp does not store your messages.

That's fine that it doesn't. It has other severe issues, about which users aren't notified in Whatsapp PR talk.

Whatsapp does store your messages. Try uninstalling the app, clear the app cache and reinstall it. You will be provided with an option to restore your chat history. I think what they don't do (at least promise) is not mine the chat conversations.

Curious. I wonder how far back it goes.

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