[Telepathy] Make Google Hangouts voice and video chat work (Ubuntu 14.04)

[Daniel Pocock]

On 22 September 2015 12:12:59 CEST, Peter Bittner <peter.bittner at gmx.net> wrote:
>Alright, then this is *really* a friggin' crazy net neutrality issue.
>Or they have it in their terms of use, then it's just that we have no
>right to complain because we don't pay for the service.
>
>In other words, this is a problem that can most probably not be fixed
>(by a user) in a technical way. (Awesome, Google, just awesome!) -- Or
>just not fixed when sticking to XMPP? I also see that Empathy is
>enabling and disabling the Voice, Video, Send File options on a user
>also based on the presence status (Available, Away), is that
>plausible?
>

Even if you see them in your buddy list, Google sometimes silently drops the chat messages you send them

Your choices:

a) hassle your provider, Google, to operate XMPP properly or not at all,
b) change provider,
c) run your own XMPP server - see the RTC Quickstart guide

Telepathy does have some responsibility in this because the Jingle code has been implemented to work the Google way, making Empathy users overconfident in using Google as a provider rather than encouraging people to avoid Google's non-standard approach from the outset.  If Telepathy had avoided such hacks then more people may be running on proper infrastructure and Google wouldn't have the market dominance that allows them to snub third-party clients like Empathy.

Regards,

Daniel



-- 
http://danielpocock.com