> Google+ is essentially the 'account page' of Google products now It makes for terrible interface. If all I want is IM or video with somebody, I was happy wit

> Google+ is essentially the 'account page' of Google products now It makes for terrible interface. If all I want is IM or video with somebody, I was happy with using pidgin from my desktop or an equivalent on Android. By killing xmpp federation, Google forces people still using them for IM to login in G+ and facing a wall of news, feed, forced feed (feed of what's hot), etc... If I want to check where my friend/spouse/kid is right now, I will now need to log in on G+, which will make me show up as available for IM, face a wall of updates, etc... I get it they decided to compete with facebook, but I don't like it. There is a silver lining though, people in the open source world were not addressing a lot of those needs, because Google was doing so much better and for free, hopefully we'll see more interesting OSS product coming out (or being re-freshed) to fill the gaps.