Are XMPP and offline processing coming to Google App Engine?

Jan 15, 2009 · 2 minute read

Google just announced that, once the port of Jaiku to App Engine is complete they will be Open Sourcing the code and stopping official development. I only used Jaiku sporadically in the heady days when everyone had to sign up for a new web 2.0 service every week or be mocked by their colleagues. What really interests me about this move though is what it means for App Engine.

If memory serves Jaiku had an instant message interface. Does that mean App Engine is going to get an XMPP interface?

I’m also presuming the original Jaiku application had at least some features powered by offline processing or used a message based architecture behind the scenes? Or used scheduled batch jobs for reporting or data mungling?

All of these issues are high up on the App Engine issues list and solutions to these two outstanding problems would move App Engine, in my opinion, to being very cool to being very useful. I’ve been impressed with the simple, well designed and well documented current set of APIs and I’d love to see a few more added for XMPP and offline processing. If the Jaiku code is open source but relies on Google only APIs it would seem a little odd.

So does anyone have any more information on this? Any passing Googlers who can get us an answer?