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That's one reason to dislike Google. They push free (as in beer) services and standards until they kill all competitors, then let it rot. To me what they do is

That's one reason to dislike Google. They push free (as in beer) services and standards until they kill all competitors, then let it rot. To me what they do is even worse than going with proprietary solutions from the start and charging for it, at least that's honest and fosters competition. Just look at what they did with Google Apps. Nowadays I only trust services where they profit (aka. anything that includes advertising), and none of the open standards they push forward.

creativityland 13y ago
Couldn't have said it better myself.
magicalist 13y ago
Except this is just generic Google comment #4 and has nothing to do with the current situation. AFAIK Google Talk is nowhere near the most popular chat service, there are a ton of competitors, and the problem here is the exact opposite of letting it rot: it's changing the communication format so completely that it's breaking the former adherence to XMPP. Google Apps doesn't seem especially relevant, but it also has lots of competitors (including, just like chat, very active open source projects), hasn't been left to rot, and they've actually moved to only charging for it, instead of having an ad-supported version. ...so, are you really just talking about Reader?
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > AFAIK Google Talk is nowhere near the most popular chat service, there are a ton of competitors, and the problem here is the exact opposite of letting it rot: it's changing the communication format so completely that it's breaking the former adherence to XMPP. That's not how I see it at all. You make it look like they are improving the service and that requires breaking compatibility with XMPP, but it's yet another strategy to force users into Google+ by consolidating Google Talk under the "Hangouts" feature. Commitment to open standards is only skin deep.
  - magicalist 13y ago
    That's, again, something totally different from what you described in your original post. Letting a service rot generally means abandonment. I'm certainly not saying that the opposite of letting something rot means improvement, I'm saying that making a major change like this is not at all an example of letting that service rot.
munificent 13y ago
> kill all competitors, then let it rot. Google hasn't killed competitors. Google chat is losing ground to iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, all of which are proprietary walled gardens. If XMPP federation was an important feature for end users, why would those products, which are all newer than Google's chat, have been able to supplant it? Sure, I'm sad that Google is turning off federation too, but I'm happy that it will let the team move faster to make a product that adds value to people's lives.

creativityland 13y ago

Couldn't have said it better myself.

magicalist 13y ago

Except this is just generic Google comment #4 and has nothing to do with the current situation. AFAIK Google Talk is nowhere near the most popular chat service, there are a ton of competitors, and the problem here is the exact opposite of letting it rot: it's changing the communication format so completely that it's breaking the former adherence to XMPP. Google Apps doesn't seem especially relevant, but it also has lots of competitors (including, just like chat, very active open source projects), hasn't been left to rot, and they've actually moved to only charging for it, instead of having an ad-supported version. ...so, are you really just talking about Reader?

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> AFAIK Google Talk is nowhere near the most popular chat service, there are a ton of competitors, and the problem here is the exact opposite of letting it rot: it's changing the communication format so completely that it's breaking the former adherence to XMPP. That's not how I see it at all. You make it look like they are improving the service and that requires breaking compatibility with XMPP, but it's yet another strategy to force users into Google+ by consolidating Google Talk under the "Hangouts" feature. Commitment to open standards is only skin deep.
- magicalist 13y ago
  That's, again, something totally different from what you described in your original post. Letting a service rot generally means abandonment. I'm certainly not saying that the opposite of letting something rot means improvement, I'm saying that making a major change like this is not at all an example of letting that service rot.

munificent 13y ago

> kill all competitors, then let it rot. Google hasn't killed competitors. Google chat is losing ground to iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, all of which are proprietary walled gardens. If XMPP federation was an important feature for end users, why would those products, which are all newer than Google's chat, have been able to supplant it? Sure, I'm sad that Google is turning off federation too, but I'm happy that it will let the team move faster to make a product that adds value to people's lives.