Apologies for merging the two in my head. However, as of now, you can still connect to Google Talk and the shutdown that was mentioned did not affect third part

Apologies for merging the two in my head. However, as of now, you can still connect to Google Talk and the shutdown that was mentioned did not affect third party clients. The conclusion is that XMPP is still used at Google to some extent (although there is no way of telling how well or how long it will be used and supported in the future, but that is beside the point).