Google has released their API for GoogleTalk. Wow! Just think of the mashups. Now you can mashup Google search with Google Maps and GoogleTalk. So for instance, one guy mashed up the Best Buy XBox 360 inventory with Google Maps which then displays pins on a map displaying the available Best Buy stores. You can then click the icon to see how many Xbox 360s are for sale. With the GoogleTalk API perhaps soon you'll be able to initiate a call to the Best Buy store. This is but one simple example of using the GoogleTalk API, I'm sure there will be some even more creative uses, including the ability to build social communitiies or even used for online gaming. This certainly puts some pressure on Skype to open up their API even more.
Here's some info from Google's website:
Google Talk uses a proposed extension to XMPP known as Jingle which can traverse many types of NATs, to establish peer-to-peer connections. The Jingle protocol is based on Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE), which is very successful in bypassing NAT. I wrote an in-depth aticle about ICE recently with regards to Microsoft and Cisco supporting the ICE standard. This now makes it at least three major players - Cisco, Microsoft, and Google supporting ICE.
Libjingle is a set of components provided by Google to interoperate with Google Talk's peer-to-peer and voice calling capabilities. The package includes source code for Google's implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio, two proposed extensions to the XMPP standard that are currently available in experimental draft form.
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 Talk Open
Google Homepage API
Gmail Agent API
Google Deskbar API
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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.