ELIMINATING GOOGLE FROM MY LIFE: A More Challenging Endeavor than Eliminating Facebook Was [FIRST DRAFT]

-- By DavidKorvin - 7 Jan 2012

Introduction

Throughout the semester, we discussed in detail the multiple freedom problems and restrictions that Facebook and Google imposes on its users. As mentioned in my first essay, I have found it rather easy to eliminate Facebook from my life completely, but to this point, I have been unable to do the same with Google. In particular, “Gmail” is the product that I still feel compelled to use on a daily basis, and it is not because of its e-mail function, but rather because of the “Gchat” function that I access by using my Gmail account.

In this essay, I will explore why I have found it much more difficult to quit Gchat than it was for me to stop using Facebook. Additionally, I will discuss some things open source programmers should aim for in designing an alternative to Gchat.

Reasons Why Gchat has become a Central Part of My Social Life

I think there are two main reasons why Gchat has become a far more integral part of my online social life than Facebook ever was. The first factor being that I only have my closest friends as Gchat contacts (around 50), while I had many acquaintances and “friends-of-friends” on Facebook (around 700). As a result, my expectations while going on Gchat have always been higher because each time I log on I plan for a higher percentage of my online interactions to be with people that I truly care about; I cannot say that I ever felt the same way when I used to log on to Facebook. Therefore, because my Gchat experience is only limited to my closest friends, I find it to be a much more personal and fulfilling experience than I ever found Facebook to be.

The other reason why Gchat has become such a large part of my online social presence is that my interaction with other users on this platform is immediate. As soon as I log on to Gchat, I am able to instantly see which of my friends are available and able to converse with them. Thus, as currently constituted, I feel compelled to use Gchat on a daily basis because it is the most convenient and efficient way to interact with my friends. (I even find Gchatting more convenient than texting friends because with Gchat you know the other person is available and reading your message, but when you text someone you are always somewhat unsure of when / if your message has been read.)

However, though I enjoy using Gchat, I have become increasingly uncomfortable using it because I only access it through a Gmail account. I think the challenge for open source programmers moving forward will be to create an online chatting platform that is as convenient and easy to use as Gchat currently is.

Potential Changes to Limit Gchat’s Dominance for Users in My Age Range

I think that for people in my age range to stop being as socially dependent on Gchat a two-step process needs to unfold: (1) people need to stop using Gmail [because almost everyone that uses Gchat accesses it through Gmail]; and (2) open source programmers need to create an online chatting platform that is appealing to a wide array of users.

I feel that many people, including many of my peers, feel compelled to use Gmail for the reasons that it allows for a lot of free memory and everyone else uses it. However, Gmail has disastrous privacy concerns for its users, and I think that many of my friends would not use it if Gchat did not exist as a supplement to Gmail. Thus, I think that any open source alternative to Gmail will need to incorporate a platform that is equivalent to that of Google’s Gchat function.

As a result, open source programmers need to focus on an online chat platform that allows users to immediately see who is available to chat once the user has logged on. I, like many of my peers, prefer to Gchat over texting or e-mailing because of the immediacy that the platform provides. Additionally, another advantage of gChat is that it is incredibly easy to use; all you need to do is click on your contact’s name to start a conversation with him or her.

Though I do not know much about computer programming, I have no reason to believe that building an open source equivalent of Gchat is difficult to do; however, I do think that it will be hard to convince people to switch from Gchat to the open source alternative because it is easy to use. Therefore, to be truly competitive, this open source chatting platform will need to offer a feature that Gchat cannot offer: PRIVACY. Though technologically-informed people know the privacy perils of Google and its products, I believe that the overwhelming percentage of Google users do not think Google’s privacy problems impacts them on an individual basis. As a result, any open source chat platform faces an uphill battle in convincing many Google users to stop using Google products, even when the open source platform is superior.

Conclusion

Because I find Gchat to be a much more essential part of my online social life than Facebook was, I have found difficulty trying to replace it. However, I know it is not in my best interests to keep using it because of the massive restrictions on users that Google forces upon its users. For me to replace Gchat with an open source equivalent, it would need to meet the requirements I have described above. Though Gchat dominates online chatting among my peers, this does not have to continue to be the case.

The good news is, been there, done that. The less good news is that you got the technical story sort of backwards.

The functional quality of gchat (not an official Google service name: it's the text messaging component of the text and voice messaging service called Google Talk) that you like, the "I see who is on when I arrive" element, has been part of "instant messaging" or "chat" programs since the beginning.

For our purposes, the beginning was free software. The service called IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, predates the Web, is almost as old as News, and just somewhat younger than the concept of email. IRC is a complexly-federated service, with tens of thousands of servers, dozens of relay networks, and an extremely large number of different free software programs that provide access to its protocols. It's more secure than the "instant messaging" systems that copied from it, and has more features. Services like the chat part of Google Talk, AOL Instant Messager, Skype Chat, and so on are just degenerate, centralized versions of IRC.

But Google Talk is built on top of a much more sophisticated messaging protocol, XMPP, which is free, and primarily implemented in free software. XMPP is a "presence" protocol (there's the part you like), which can transmit text, voice, video, or any other form of bits in a many-to-many geometry, efficiently. The future of Internet telephony isn't Skype, it's the Jingle standard, which is an XMPP representation, to which Google is converging Google Talk.

FreedomBox contains a complete, secure XMPP messaging platform in its 1.0 version. This is the easiest part of the task for us to complete. Because we already have dozens of FOSS applications for XMPP chat, including our multi-protocol chat client, Pidgin, which can connect you to your "Gchat" friends and your AIM friends and your IRC chatrooms and any other XMPP servers anywhere on the planet you care to connect through, with conversation security, all at once. So all we have to do is make them more secure on a network that can be trusted to have only your actual, real friends on it no matter who is trying to listen in between. So later this year you will have a real, secure, effective system of text, voice and video chat compatible with "Gchat" architecturally "built-in" to any FreedomBox computer.

That's the good news. The bad news is that you didn't know any of this, though a few hours with the Wikipedia would have done wonders in carrying you from "Gchat" all the way to FreedomBox. I think the next revision has to take a little more account of the factual context.