Unable to add GMAIL buddies in Pidgin 2.7.7

[Etan Reisner]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 06:56:04PM +1100, P G Schmitt wrote:
>
> Hi & thanks for the replies.
> It sounds like I misunderstood Pidgin's ability.
>
> I have used pidgin thus: @hotmail to chat with an @yahoo, so figured from
> what I read I should be able to use it to chat to @gmail friends.
>
> Is it intended to work this way?

The MSN and Yahoo services have a (server side) intercommunication bridge
which is what allows you to talk to a person using an @hotmail.com MSN
account from your Yahoo IM account (and vice versa).

The AIM and ICQ protocols are likewise interoperable (though for a very
different reason).

As far as I am aware no other two protocols are bridged in such an
automatic fashion.

There are services available on some XMPP/Jabber servers which bridge to
the various "legacy" IM services which allow XMPP<->[Other Service]
communication but they are specific bridges developed for explicitely that
purpose.

pidgin does not, as has been indicated already, allow automatic bridging
of networks because it simply cannot do that. In order to utilize any
given IM network it must connect to it and that requires an account.

    -Etan