Uhm... Google wasn't the first to use XMPP. XMPP is also as open as a project can be. It's still going strong, providing a modern, mobile friendly IM protocol -

Uhm... Google wasn't the first to use XMPP. XMPP is also as open as a project can be. It's still going strong, providing a modern, mobile friendly IM protocol - it just happens without Google now. XMPP never was a Google project of any kind. They just played EEE by having the biggest server and making it incompatible with the rest of the network. That's a completely different story that what it seems from your post - no external development happened to progress Google's service in any way. Google backstabbed XMPP, sure, but it's healing pretty well. I don't see how any time spend by developers on XMPP is wasted just because Google backed off. They took their userbase with them, sure, but if you want modern, open, federated IM network, XMPP is a sane choice. The only proper alternative these days is Matrix, but that's more of an IRC replacement.