Well, they're probably reading proto buffers instead of xml[1]. And proto deserialization automatically drops unrecognized fields. So yeah, as long as you conti

Well, they're probably reading proto buffers instead of xml[1]. And proto deserialization automatically drops unrecognized fields. So yeah, as long as you continue shipping your core data in already-established fields, and don't radically change the interpretation of those fields, backwards compatibility is going to be built in. [1] - So goes the standard joke: Some people think Google is an advertising company. Techies recognize Google as an advertising company. But in reality Google is a company which turns protobuffers into more differenter protobuffers.