microsoft outlook - Talk to Google Talk/Hangout contacts and Skype/MSN contacts from one client
2014-04
marczellm
I have some friends only available on Google Talk and some others who use Skype. I use the old Talk client because the new Hangouts client requires a Chrome installation.
Now, theoretically, Microsoft integrated Google Talk into Outlook.com. This means that I should be able to chat with Google Talk contacts from a web browser in outlook.com. This sometimes works, but I cannot see all the contacts, only some of them. This may be because Google dropped something called XMPP interoperability with the introduction of Hangouts. Does Outlook.com use XMPP to connect to Google Talk? If it does this means that their GTalk support will cease to work.
If this works, should Google Talk contacts appear in the desktop Skype client too? It has an option called "Show Outlook contacts" but that does nothing in my case.
In the most likely case that I can't get this to work,
- is Microsoft planning to add Google Talk support to the desktop version of Skype?
- is there a reliable (non-adware, non-malware, widely-used) client that can talk to both worlds?
Diego
Directly from Gmail's integrated chat feature, is it possible to chat with Windows Live Hotmail contacts? I already added them, of course, but they don't show up in the chat thing.
I googled it and some old stuff about a Jabber client came up, but it is kind of outdated.
Any help is appreciated.
Mitch Dempsey
No you cant. Windows Live uses MSN Messenger, not Jabber. The chat on the Gmail interface can interface to AIM, but not MSN.
music2myear
It has to do with protocols. There isn't a "chat" protocol that, like HTML, is used for all chat programs.
Google Chat works with the systems it is designed to work with, which are Google and AIM. MSN messenger (I guess it's probably Windows Live Messenger now) works with the systems it is designed to work with, which do not include Google Chat or AIM.
Using a multi protocol client such as Pigdin, Meebo.com (which I've used extensively), or something else still requires you have accounts for each of the clients you wish to work with. For instance, if you only have a Google Chat account and create a Meebo account you'll only be able to communicate with your Google Chat friends. Setting up a Windows Live account and adding that account to your Meebo setup will then allow you to communicate with Windows Live contacts in the same interface as the Google Chat (the Meebo interface) but that's only because the interface hides the fact you're still dealing with totally and completely seperate and different systems.
Amr Badawy
you can use an client application such as Nimbuzz or Fring that support multi-network Or you can use some web one such as http://www.meebo.com/
Daniel Andersson
You can use a Jabber transport to connect to MSN users (with some service limitations) as mentioned in http://sa-os.blogspot.se/2010/02/connecting-to-msn-using-google-talk.html.
Since this announcement, it should also not be an impossibility to communicate directly with MSN contacts through XMPP (though Microsoft is as usual not really following "standards", as per what developers of e.g. BitlBee say) and thus Google Talk. I have not seen any direct Google Talk guides using this, though (and personally I solve it with the before mentioned BitlBee). See the earlier linked Microsoft developers' blog for more info.