214

With all the current discussion about the threat that Instagram Threads has on the Fediverse and that article about how Google Embrace Extend Extinguished XMPP, I was left very confused, since that was the first time I've heard that Gchat supported XMPP or what XMPP actually is, and I've had my personal Gmail since beta (no, don't ask for it), and before then, everybody was using AOL/MSN Messenger to talk with each other online. I don't think I've ever heard of a single person who started using Gchat as an XMPP client.

Instead of a plot where Google took over XMPP userbase via EEE, it just seem to me more like XMPP was a niche protocol that very few hardcore enthusiasts used, and then Google tried to add support for it in their product, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the development effort to support a feature that very few of their users actually used and abandoned it in typical Google fashion.

So, to prove my point, how many people have used XMPP here, and how many people here haven't?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] OneCardboardBox 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This could of been for internal reasons, it could of been to fragment the user base knowing they had the most users and would force convergence, we really can’t be sure.

Given the well documented history of Google making absolutely dogshit product decisions, I think it's the former. In fact, I don't even need to think. Google already explained their reasoning. They had several different communication products (including Talk) that couldn't be integrated together. They wanted the services to work seamlessly to try and compete with Messenger.

If chat wasn’t popular among their users, this wouldn’t of been needed.

Sure, chat was probably popular. However, I bet that 99% of their chat users never cared about XMPP compatibility in the first place. When you're a product manager at a billion dollar megacorp who's aiming for a promotion and you have a choice between making 1% of your users sad and massively simplifying the complexity of your new project... you pick the 99%

[-] dudeami0@lemmy.dudeami.win 7 points 1 year ago

As for the article, I think this is generally PR and corporate speak. Whatever their reasons were, they apparently didn't shut down the initial XMPP servers until 2022 so it was a reliable technology. There "simplification" was bringing users into their ecosystem to more easily monetize their behaviour. This goes along with your last paragraph, at the end of the day the corporation is a for-profit organization. We can't trust a for-profit organization to have the best of intentions, some manager is aiming to meet a metric that gets them their bonus. Is this what we really want dictating the services we use day to day?

[-] OneCardboardBox 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

they apparently didn’t shut down the initial XMPP servers until 2022

Sure. They probably had one client who paid them a pile of money every year to keep it live. If there was some plan to extinguish XMPP, surely they wouldn't have kept it around for so long.

We can’t trust a for-profit organization to have the best of intentions

Sure. The solution is simple: don't use corporate platforms. The way to prevent what happened was not for XMPP to block Google. It was for people to not switch to Google in the first place. Google Talk released in 2005. This was absolutely back when everyone still believed "Don't be evil".

this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
214 points (94.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

34916 readers
1611 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS