Google Hangout chat and the missing XMPP
My friend Jason Salas (who is an amazing and smart man - you should follow him in all of his endevours) asked me to comment on a post on Google+ from the Android Authority about XMPP being dropped by Hangout(s). I wanted to repost what I said here for anyone who reads my posts but is not on G+.
From Google+ is a good summary about the issue with XMPP - I may quibble with some of his thoughts about how Google "helped" XMPP but not enough to reject the post completely.
We in the XMPP community have seen this before and we will continue to support everyone who wants to use a stable, robust and open protocol. In some ways it may be an odd blessing as Google did not support some of the more secure features of federation and now that the largest (public) client base is out of the picture we will be able to revisit some items that were previously put on hold.
I'm also sensing that Google itself may not be completely aware of what just happened, this may be a case of the marketing/product folks driving the release of a product(s) that were not yet set in order to meet the I/O deadline - which is in-of-itself another worrying point.
But yea, there have been a number of great non-XSF folks posting concerns and questions. The XSF is ready to help when Google realizes the full impact of what has happened ;)