Comment by jallmann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jallmann | Hacker News Reader

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It's not just bandwidth, but the cost to process that XML, which is very expensive compared to other serialization formats. Then there are a whole host of other concerns that result from XML being text-based (cdata, preventing runaway parsing, etc). Not defending what Google has done, but the reality is XMPP is simply the most common among a lineup of really crappy chat/presence protocols.

Now, XML itself is one problem, but the "culture" (eg, usage norms) around XML is another -- much like Java's cultural preoccupation with abstraction and boilerplate, XML-based formats have a tendency to veer towards the unwieldy and verbose. XMPP is no exception.

While XMPP has been instrumental in propagating standardized presence and IM, its age is showing. Unless we develop a modern, open replacement that is natively suited to the needs of today's Internet (voice, video, file transfer, group messaging, etc+), we will see companies continue to develop proprietary solutions that are locked behind walled gardens.

+XEPs and extensions are insufficient; too many optional extensions hinders interop and contorts the system beyond its original design specifications. Just ask anyone who's tried to implement chat/buddylists on top of SIP presence.

Sorry but I just don't see how bandwidth and XML could ever be a problem for Google.

Youtube alone makes up a significant amount of the Internet's total traffic. Sending compressed XML isn't a problem for Google.

Just because Google has a lot of capacity doesn't mean they're wasteful with it. At scale, minor inefficiencies add up to a lot. That is the incentive for protobufs, etc. For a more concrete example of seemingly trivial bandwidth savings, check out the HTML source to their 404 page (it validates!): http://www.google.com/asdf.html

That 404 page is a relic from the past. Take a look at what makes up their search page and you'll see that it is almost 1 MB uncompressed. That's for a page that displays a logo, a navbar, a text input and a button.

Sure, the page has really become a one-page app with some advantages that come from pre-loading, but jeez, it is still 1MB!

> Sorry but I just don't see how bandwidth and XML could ever be a problem for Google.

Then why comment? If you have nothing to input from either side. Doubt is not a valuable commodity.

We not here for the sole reason of providing value to you. Although we may, incidentally, hope to do so.

Some of us need our thoughts clarified by the community.

In any case, I find that learning happens in an atmosphere of uncertainty, humility and exploration. Doubt, thus, is a valuable commodity in any community which encourages learning, and I'd like to believe HN is one of them.

Neither is being a snarky dickhead.

Maybe you should refrain from commenting until you have something "valuable" to offer, too.

Yes it is. For instance, if someone spends years trying to solve a problem and they can't do it and they tell you that they doubt that you're going to be able to solve it in a year and probably shouldn't base your strategies around doing so then that information is worth something - whatever the relevant entire costs are for your having done otherwise.

If you respect people, then their opinions tell you things about the search space in which they live. Heck, even if you don't respect people it at least tells you nsomething about how widely known a particular thing is within comparable sections of society.

There are, potentially, some good arguments for filtering your information to keep newbies out of higher level discussion where people are trying to make progress on a problem - but in the context here it seems to me at the moment that you're just being somewhat mean; I don't see what you hope to gain other than to make someone feel bad.

The problem isn't for Google, it's for the receiving mobile devices.

Let us say each message exchanged in XMPP is about 200-300 bytes. If in a session (time between app foreground and background on a mobile device), user exchanges 10 messages, we are talking about net data transfer of less than 3K bytes. Each of those characters might be compared to 10 tokens while parsing (thee is scope for significant optimization). I think, the battery cost of 30K comparison on CPU isn't comparable to the cost of rendering one of those messages on the screen and it might be sub 1% of the cost of keeping the screen lit for that user session.

Optimizing parsing cost, at the expense of breaking foundational philosophy of their communication services, is hardly justifiable. XMPP has several overheads, XML will not top that list.

Oh, puh-lease.

I hate XML as much as the next guy, but for a phone that can do 20 fps OpenGL scene the cost of parsing XML that is most certainly valid and as used by XMPP is effectively nothing.

> Oh, puh-lease.

Don't be a dick.

> for a phone that can do 20 fps OpenGL...

It's not just the phone, there is server overhead too, which everyone seems to be ignoring. While XML has a lot of problems, I never said it was the problem with XMPP (although it certainly isn't helping).

>> Oh, puh-lease.

> Don't be a dick.

Oh, puh-lease.

> there is server overhead too

It's all going over the SSL, remember?

I have a life-long passionate hate towards XML, but you have to look at a larger picture to understand why Google is killing XMPP support. It's not the performance, it's not the lack of the protocol elegance. It's the fact that they are building a wall. Facebook got their herd walled and it seems to be working well for them, so it's only natural Google is doing the same. The XMPP was in a way, so it's gotta go.

Other than the unnecessary snark, I don't think we disagree fundamentally. I'm just as annoyed by walled gardens as most people here.

But NIH/control is an unlikely reason for brewing their own protocol. If they simply wanted a wall, they could just disable federation. They've done it before, and it's working for WhatsApp, it's working for Facebook, it's working for Microsoft [1].

G already has a lot of experience with XMPP and it's probably just the engineering reality between what they want to accomplish with Hangouts and what it would take to retrofit XMPP or an existing protocol. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Maybe. But it wouldn't be the first time, and won't be the last.

[1] Remember that FBChat, Lync etc are internally proprietary, but they do expose XMPP gateways. Intentionally preventing federation is shitty, but dropping XMPP at the core is not.

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