The difference
Skype a global peer-peer voip system, mostly used to make free or very cheap international calls
GoogleTalk a peer-peer voip system could be used to make free international calls - as long as you are both in the USA.
Google has moved its Google Talk VoIP infrastructure to Jingle, the voice and media signaling protocol that seeks to provide an open-standard alternative to the proprietary protocols used by the Microsoft-owned Skype and other VoIP technologies. With an email on the XMPP Standards Foundation mailing list, Google's Peter …
as a matter of fact, google talk allows free calls from google talk to google talk as skype does - video quality much better at least when the connection is fast - while its mobile rates to the UK for instance are cheaper than skype; the only trouble being, for now, that to add credit you must be in the states - needs an US telephone number connected to the account at least temporarily
I have looked at tons of Skype-replacement wannabees, but they all lack crypto. Some are upfront about it, some you have to prod a bit, and one made me laugh by sending me a whole gob of text to basically excuse having to say "no we don't".
I'll repeat it here in full:
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Some companies in our field claim that they encrypt their traffic. They do so while using proprietary technologies, not open to external scrutiny. We believe that unless you use open technologies, you should not claim that you use encryption.
At Viber, we believe in being 100% truthful to our users. This applies to everything we do and even more so when it comes to matters of security and encryption. Since Viber uses proprietary technologies, we believe we cannot claim that Viber is truly encrypted and as such, unlike some companies in our field, we do not claim that we are encrypted. We leave the decision of how to use our service and whether to trust its security to our users.
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Let me translate that into US and UK terms: we offer intercept, but we still want a hug, thank you.
Why would I want my voip software running in a web browser? I want my voip software to run at startup and always run in the background, but popup and notify me when it needs my attention - which is almost the exact opposite of what I want my web browser to do.
while ChomeOS is great for lots of things the "all int he browser, full screen" is a really painful paradigm.
In ChromeOS there are some extentions that get around it with popups and notifiers, but it doesn't feel like a "real" OS, more like the old AS400 "windowed" interface (hardly a step into the future)
Things like VoIP and IM and even utilities like a calculator need to just be available and not be tied to a window
People sitting and coding a new breed of Skype, something will work on a brand new operating system based on linux, at MS building!
It would happen if MS got rid of all top management and became a services company like IBM but they are not.
I seriously doubt even the existing Skype clients except Windows (and perhaps OSX) will be maintained. They will sure try to get rid of qt on Windows version for sure. They hate qt and Nokia is their puppet now.
When Skype told Nimbuzz, Fring that they can't connect their servers anymore, a very interesting thing happened. People gave up Skype instead of third party apps.
Most amazing thing is, Nimbuzz and Fring were actually coding a super stable and reliable client for them, for free! I admire their Symbian team but you can't really compete with Nimbuzz and Fring since they were born on mobile. These guys really knows how to code and even sell their (ad free) software.
One wonders... Were MS guys involved with Skype while they did this stupid policy change? That really sounds, almost shouts like MS.
Google are not competing - they are just desperate to get their paws into every pie - not to make money / provide a good service but to tie people in to their adverts.
The more poeple use Google Search - the more advertisers end up having to use Google and the more then end up paying for those adverts. This increases the cost for the retailer so in turn the customer ends up paying more - it's like a tax.
I like some Google products but get the feeling they are desparately looking for another revenue stream (and not finding it) or just trying to p*ss on other peoples parades (MS buys Skype so they try and make their VoIP more open).
"It once chewed through most of my allowed bandwidth at a steady 30KB/s for days until I spotted it and uninstalled. Have been standard-compliant ever since :)"
You sure about that - I just checked my Skype for Windows and it is typically using between zero and 10-15 bytes (not Kb) per second when idle.
Standard compliant is great unless you want to call almost anyone - we have both SIP and Skype in the office - 99% of the IP calls come via Skype. I use Skype at home as 99% of people I know have it or can install it easily (minutes) whereas SIP is often far more complex.
Update to Android? Like what? We're still waiting for video calling through Skype.
I may be in the majority, but video calling is the main reason I have Skype at home, to keep in contact with my distant friends/family.
Skype on Android would be a killer app if it did video calls, but it's months too late with apps like Fring allowing a get-out to a lot of people.
As soon as I've found an easy-to-use Windows client that supports video-calling, I'll be switching the silver surfers in my family.
And a browser-based solution is not an option: they need an icon they can click and leave running in the background.
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA1417/How-much-bandwidth-does-Skype-need
0-4kbps when idle and about 30kbps when actually making a voice call - thats kilobits not kilobytes.
My fairly average broadband connection gives about 3000-4000kbs download and 300kbs upload - so pretty insignificant.
Skype may select your system to become supernode, at which time it *will* route its handshaking through your system, if you want this or not.
In my case, 30KB/s was the maximum uplink speed I had, I assume it could have gone faster.
Skype is a P2P network, 99% of the traffic goes through the systems of users, they only do the authentication.