Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Started

• What is Google Talk?
• Where can I find the Developer Guide?

Technical

• How do I send or receive "now playing" status messages?
• What domains can a Google Talk user authenticate with?
• Should I let my user enter their domain name as part of their sign in?
• Can I find out usage numbers for my client on the Google Talk service?

Getting Started

What is Google Talk?

Google Talk is Google's implementation of the open standard XMPP, or the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. For more information about XMPP, please see its official website and its wiki page.

Because Google Talk supports open standards, it is fully interoperable with other communications services that support the open server-to-server XMPP protocol. This means that users of any of these services can communicate directly with Google Talk users, and vice versa. Here is a list of just some of the service providers that already support this open industry standard.

Where can I find the Developer Guide?

The Developer Guide can be found at http://code.google.com/apis/talk/talk_developers_home.html.

Technical

How do I send or receive "now playing" status messages?

Google Talk enables users to display the name of the currently playing track on their computer. This information is just a simple message consisting of two characters, U+266B and U+0020, (which display as "♫ ") followed by the track name. Your client can send a "now playing" status message, or display this information received from other clients. This status message is not shared among multiple clients of a single user (it is not a shared status message), and it should not be stored in the status message history.

What domains can a Google Talk user authenticate with?

Google doesn't publish a list of valid Google Talk client domains, although currently both gmail.com and googlemail.com are used for different users. If you do not know the appropriate domain for your user's JID when signing in, you can ask the server to specify the domain during authentication as described in JID Domain Discovery.

Should I let my user enter their domain name as part of their sign in?

Yes. In fact, it's required. Google Talk now hosts users from several different domains—don't assume that it will always be gmail.com. Your client should allow a user to enter their full username@domain information when they sign in. If a user does not enter their domain, you should display an error message. (As an alternative, or to make your application more robust against users entering an incorrect domain, you could implement the JID Domain Discovery XMPP extension.)

Can I find out usage numbers for my client on the Google Talk service?

If your client properly implements XEP 0115, the Entity Capabilities extension, and identifies itself in the node attribute of the <c> capabilities element, Google will be able to generate usage numbers for your client application. These numbers include no personal data other than the number of users using a chat client. We will periodically publish third-party client usage numbers on our Talkabout Blog with statistics for each unique node value.