The turning point was when Larry Page became CEO. For years Google tried to beat Facebook with open specs/protocols like XMPP, but there was also Activity Strea

The turning point was when Larry Page became CEO. For years Google tried to beat Facebook with open specs/protocols like XMPP, but there was also Activity Streams and others (PubSubHubbub). None of those really took off. I think Larry Page made the company more product focused and a few successes, like Hangouts, "validated" that it was the better approach than focusing on open protocols.