It's safe to assume that for anything that's even mildly controversial externally, there's a ton of internal discussion as well. Usually the internal discussion

It's safe to assume that for anything that's even mildly controversial externally, there's a ton of internal discussion as well. Usually the internal discussion is even more passionate than the external discussion. I'm an advocate for the idea that Google wants to compete on a level playing field, which leads directly to the fact that I believe Google should also support open standards and interoperability. That means that any time we aren't doing that, we need to have a really, really good reason for it. That said, after a ton of discussion about XMPP internally, I understand the team's decision and their reasons.