Other than the unnecessary snark, I don't think we disagree fundamentally. I'm just as annoyed by walled gardens as most people here. But NIH/control is an unl

Other than the unnecessary snark, I don't think we disagree fundamentally. I'm just as annoyed by walled gardens as most people here. But NIH/control is an unlikely reason for brewing their own protocol. If they simply wanted a wall, they could just disable federation. They've done it before, and it's working for WhatsApp, it's working for Facebook, it's working for Microsoft [1]. G already has a lot of experience with XMPP and it's probably just the engineering reality between what they want to accomplish with Hangouts and what it would take to retrofit XMPP or an existing protocol. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Maybe. But it wouldn't be the first time, and won't be the last. [1] Remember that FBChat, Lync etc are internally proprietary, but they do expose XMPP gateways. Intentionally preventing federation is shitty, but dropping XMPP at the core is not.