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December 17, 2005

Google Taunts Skype, Releases GTalk API

Michael Arrington

31 comments »

Google has just released a set of components called Libjingle that allow third party applications to interact with Google Talk. The components, which include some source code, are being released under a very liberal license allowing for free incorporation into commercial and non-commercial software.

We are releasing this source code as part of our ongoing commitment to promoting consumer choice and interoperability in Internet-based real-time-communications. The Google source code is made available under a Berkeley-style license, which means you are free to incorporate it into commercial and non-commercial software and distribute it.

In addition to enabling interoperability with Google Talk, there are several general purpose components in the library such as the P2P stack which can be used to build a variety of communication and collaboration applications. We are eager to see the many innovative applications the community will build with this technology.

Below is a summary of the individual components of the library. You can use any or all of these components.

* base - Low-level portable utility functions.
* p2p - The p2p stack, including base p2p functionality and client hooks into XMPP.
* session - Phone call signaling.
* third_party - Non-Google components required for some functionality.
* xmllite - XML parser.
* xmpp - XMPP engine.

Google has done a great job with spurring Google Maps mashups - some people claim hundreds of thousands of third party applications. This code release is even more important and is a huge end around Skype. In fact, Google has basically put a gun to Skype’s head and demanded they now release their API as well.

Skype allows integration with the Skype client. What Google has done goes far beyond this, allowing integration with the Google Talk’s VOIP network.

Here’s an example of a potential mashup - putting google map location information in the same application as google talk, allowing mapping of everyone in the conversation (Gizmo does this). See local businesses and people and add them to the conversation.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005 at 11:14 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Pete Cashmore

    December 17th, 2005 at 12:04 pm

    Openness always wins - what choice does Skypebay have now?

    Bring on the mashups!

  2. Daniel

    December 17th, 2005 at 2:47 pm

    Odd feature I would love to see. In MSN Messenger you can see what some contacts are listening to, but you can’t share.

    How about making CC content shareable? See what your friends are playing, click, listen. Open is good :)

  3. Tom

    December 17th, 2005 at 3:41 pm

    Daniel @ #comment-5486:
    MSN lets you click the title and it looks it up in MSN music, where you should be able to listen to it as a demo or purchase it. Apple could easily fix the functionality in iChat that shows what youre listening to, to let you download the song from iTunes. Yahoo could easily do similar.

    MSNs 3degrees lets you listen to what the other guy is listening to as well, I believe.

    Anyway, it would be nice to have an api for the google talk client (not the server) so a similar plugin to the one for winamp and msn could be written for winamp and gtalk. gtalk already supports custom text, so it wouldnt be a huge jump. The ability for gtalk to see if the music is CC or not would be a pretty big invasion of privacy, as google would essentially be logging what you are listening to as it checks the songtitle against a google search of creative commons licensed content, and it would have to launch a search for every song to find out where to send the link. If it, instead, used the URL: portion of ID3v1 or v2 to create a link, and the creative commons music has a properly made tag, people would still be able to easily obtain the CC tunes.

    Like youll ever read this comment :-/

  4. Vinay P.

    December 17th, 2005 at 3:46 pm

    The VoIP protocol space is becoming such a mess now with Skype, SIP, and now Jingle. Since Jingle and SIP use very similar protocols, I wonder how easy it would be to dial Google Talk users from a SIP phone via some sort of gateway?

  5. Julian Bond

    December 18th, 2005 at 12:59 am

    It’s a gun to MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and Apple iChat as well. (not to mention Vonage et al) With Google’s alleged stake in AOL, you have to think that AIM will join in. And Apple have ties to AIM so they may as well. Google-Jabber-AOL-Apple could go a long way to shaking out the IM-PC VoIP market.

    But first, Google and people who use the Jingle library have to actually ship something that’s better than Skype and MSN. The message is the same. Ship early, ship often. Can they do it?

    And we still need Video support, In-Out gateways to POTS, encrypted calls, SIP links and all the other stuff that’s been bolted into IM. But hey, it’s a start and a big one.

  6. Michael Arrington

    December 18th, 2005 at 1:22 am

    Julian,

    Video is great, but far more important to me would be the ability to share applications, like festoon.

  7. Mike

    December 18th, 2005 at 6:40 pm

    I am not sure that this alone is enough to take on Skype. Yes, Google did great with their api for their new Google maps product but the maps product does not benefit from network effects the same way.

    In other words, it is far easier to break into the market for maps, which had two inferior products (MapQuest and Yahoo! maps) and where the switching costs are low.

    People love Skype, it works great, and I would not switch it for a second just because someone comes up with yet another silly mashup.

    However, I certainly hope that Skype will join with a more powerful API and if they do, it will be nearly impossible for Google to catch them. So, from that point of view I think the added pressure on Skype is great.

  8. Michael Arrington

    December 18th, 2005 at 7:03 pm

    Mike, I think you are probably right - this isn’t enough to unseat Skype, but it certainly will put pressure on them. I reiterate that I really think application sharing is far more important than video, by the way. Festoon, for all its faults, has this and its awesome.

  9. Brett Morgan

    December 18th, 2005 at 7:38 pm

    I’m just thinking about the possibilities for building online team games on top of this…

  10. Nolan Eakins

    December 19th, 2005 at 1:46 pm

    I just wanted to note that GTalk is still far from open. It’s no different than AIM, and Yahoo and MSN Messengers. It’s still a closed garden at the moment. Just because they’ve released a library doesn’t change that fact.

    On the plus side, they are using XMPP/Jabber and are working with the JSF (jabber.org) to specify this protocol. I’m even throwing in my two cents. The hope of the Jabber community is that Google eventually flips the server to server switch.

    When they do, GTalk WILL be an open system. It’ll be exactly like email. Until they flip that switch, refrain from calling GTalk open.

  11. Eaton Lanno

    December 19th, 2005 at 8:58 pm

    I just made a cool discovery. XML-RPC works through Jabber servers including GTalk. See http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0009.html for more info.

    It’d be cool if Dave Winer could hook this up to create an “instant outliner”.

  12. pascal rossini

    December 20th, 2005 at 7:00 am

    As Google releases the Libjingle API suite, ADS-click, provider of private-labeled advertising solutions, announces it will expand its pay-per-call solution SKY-click to use Google Talk.

    ADS-click will use Google’s Libjingle API to expand its voice over IP solution SKY-click to Google Talk. SKY-click is a technology that already interacts with Skype to provide with private-labeled VOIP click-to-call contextual and search advertising.

    SKY-click integrates into ADS-click private-labeled contextual and search solution, trusted by major players of the online advertising market around the world.

    ADS-click will also release a 100% VOIP Skype and Google Talk call center during first quarter 2006. It will feature full call center capabilities, such as operator settings, language management, call history and integration with Customer Relationships Management systems. This call center will allow big and small companies to provide customers with live sales, support and training using video, voice and text messaging.

  13. Andrea Bauer

    December 20th, 2005 at 8:58 am

    Besides I guess that the open-source-policy of Google not only promotes innovations since potential mashups were enabled but also raises the adoption rate of Google Talk’s VoIP service.

  14. masarlay

    January 20th, 2006 at 9:00 pm

    it’s gorgeous to be with all friends around the world needless of travelling or else.
    i love G-talk!

  15. zcllz

    May 19th, 2006 at 2:19 am

    I want to mobile phone call from gtalk.I don’t know how to use.Please reply.

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