4 ms·

Google Talk's usage of XMPP was more of an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish than _actual_ adoption.

kevincox 6y ago
It may have been. But I wouldn't be surprised if the people who started it actually wanted a properly federated standardized XMPP. Of course then leadership got to it :'(
jrimbault 6y ago
There were a few months more than 10 years ago when you could use one XMPP client for all your various social/chat accounts. I want to say around 2008 ?
- Eldt 6y ago
  Yes... I remember using pidgin for that, and I believe there was some kind of proxy I used to link up IRC too. Those were the days.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    same, that was the golden era of IM, using Pidgin for MSN, fb, google,...
- StavrosK 6y ago
  More than a few months, I used that for years. Even after Google announced the shutting down of their XMPP service, it worked for years.
webmaven 6y ago
> Google Talk's usage of XMPP was more of an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish than _actual_ adoption. That would have been an actual strategy, and probably would have worked, but from what I could tell they just sort of fumbled around without really committing. As I recall, the Embrace was half-hearted, the implementation was pretty standard with no Extensions, and they never really got around to an Extinguish phase, they eventually just phased out support for XMPP clients at all. The only way I think Google's incoherence of multiple overlapping stabs at messaging over many years makes sense is as internal maneuvering and jockeying for position among execs playing chess with the various engineering teams and end users as pawns.
- mminer237 6y ago
  They extinguished their own service by killing Google Talk and replacing it with Hangouts. They never dropped XMPP from Talk, they just never implemented it in Hangouts. Talk and Wave really started Google's churn of messaging apps, which has seemed to just hurt themselves.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > They never dropped XMPP from Talk, they just never implemented it in Hangouts. ISTR that they did back off of XMPP support in Google Talk to some extent a bit before that last move. Something about not allowing incoming connection requests from non-Google accounts by default IIRC.

It may have been. But I wouldn't be surprised if the people who started it actually wanted a properly federated standardized XMPP. Of course then leadership got to it :'(

jrimbault 6y ago

There were a few months more than 10 years ago when you could use one XMPP client for all your various social/chat accounts. I want to say around 2008 ?

Eldt 6y ago
Yes... I remember using pidgin for that, and I believe there was some kind of proxy I used to link up IRC too. Those were the days.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  same, that was the golden era of IM, using Pidgin for MSN, fb, google,...
StavrosK 6y ago
More than a few months, I used that for years. Even after Google announced the shutting down of their XMPP service, it worked for years.

webmaven 6y ago

> Google Talk's usage of XMPP was more of an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish than _actual_ adoption. That would have been an actual strategy, and probably would have worked, but from what I could tell they just sort of fumbled around without really committing. As I recall, the Embrace was half-hearted, the implementation was pretty standard with no Extensions, and they never really got around to an Extinguish phase, they eventually just phased out support for XMPP clients at all. The only way I think Google's incoherence of multiple overlapping stabs at messaging over many years makes sense is as internal maneuvering and jockeying for position among execs playing chess with the various engineering teams and end users as pawns.

mminer237 6y ago
They extinguished their own service by killing Google Talk and replacing it with Hangouts. They never dropped XMPP from Talk, they just never implemented it in Hangouts. Talk and Wave really started Google's churn of messaging apps, which has seemed to just hurt themselves.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > They never dropped XMPP from Talk, they just never implemented it in Hangouts. ISTR that they did back off of XMPP support in Google Talk to some extent a bit before that last move. Something about not allowing incoming connection requests from non-Google accounts by default IIRC.