That's what yegge's infamous platform rant was begging for. Google has been slow to appease, though. Controlling everything is more enticing to the ego of a manager.

Do you mean Linux needs Drive to offer "well documented protocols"?

Otherwise I don't know what "Linux[...] protocols" you're referring to or how it's relevant to GTalk vs. Skype, etc. Skype integrates poorly because it's locked down and has been neglected for... 4 years?

> Do you mean Linux needs Drive to offer "well documented protocols"?

Grandparent wrote:

>>> I am glad to hear Google is considering offering Google Drive for linux.

My point is that Google should not focus too much on developing yet another synchronisation program locked on Google Drive; what they should do is publishing and maintaining a detailed set of protocols that can be implemented by the existing synchronisation programs that are already well integrated in some Linux desktops (DejaDup, for example).

Skype integrated poorly in Linux desktops because there are no publicly accessible and complete Skype protocol specification. This makes it very hard to integrate it into current applications (the telepathy frameworks, for example). There are nice hacks like pidgin-skype: a bridge that interacts with Pidgin and relays user actions to an hidden Skype window, but they are unreliable hacks because they aim at a constantly moving target. (Well, not so moving now that Skype seems abandoned on Linux.)

Sorry for the misunderstanding. This is what I'd hoped you meant and I couldn't possibly agree more. Unfortunately, the propreitary nature of both products makes me skeptical about how likely this is to happen for Skype, maybe even Drive, although there are already oAuth APIs (That require a Chrome Web Store app nonetheless)