[Discuss] Google Voice - the fud about XMPP

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Rich Braun wrote:
> Well, it's 3.5 hours until the end of 5/15/14, Pacific time.
> My Obihai units are still making/receiving calls.  
> Guess I'll find out, in a few more hours. :-)

A colleague reports his Obi is still working with GV today.

(He prepared for the transition by setting up a local instance of
Asterisk, forwarding GV calls to an IPKal inbound SIP number terminated
on his Asterisk PBX, and "faking" outbound calling through GV by using a
Python script[1] that uses a GV API to request a callback, which
Asterisk answers and connects to the extension making the outbound call.
(Way too much hacking and work just to get free outbound calls, in my
opinion.))

1.
http://hobbiesbytwinclouds.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/how-to-make-and-receive-call-using-google-voice-without-xmpp/


> Perhaps the whole XMPP scare was a rumor put out by some VoIP companies
> looking to cash in on Google's blithe indifference to the whole thing?

The most prominent notice I've see has been from Obihai, and this
transition was not in their best interest, so I doubt it.

You've seen other VoIP providers playing up this situation in their
marketing? (Other than the partners Obihai brought in to help ease the
transition?)


> I've seen no official advance notice from Google, and no
> announcements today about the End of XMPP As We Know It.

I think that might be because Google never publicly said that they
supported XMPP as a means of third party access to GV in the first
place. I haven't confirmed this, but I don't think they ever published
documentation of had a supported API.

I got the impression that a few clever people reverse engineered what
Google Talk was doing, and took advantage of it.

So if the mechanism was unsupported and unofficial to begin with, they
probably feel they had no obligation to announce it was being discontinued.

But clearly Google had some form of communication with Obihai. Whether
that was a friendly heads up of a soon to be discontinued API, or a
"stop using our service without authorization, or we'll block your
clients and sue" is hard to say, but the former fits with the expected
changes in the roadmap for Hangouts.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/