With all the current discussion about the threat that Instagram Threads has on the Fediverse and that article about how Google Embrace Extend Extinguished XMPP, I was left very confused, since that was the first time I’ve heard that Gchat supported XMPP or what XMPP actually is, and I’ve had my personal Gmail since beta (no, don’t ask for it), and before then, everybody was using AOL/MSN Messenger to talk with each other online. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a single person who started using Gchat as an XMPP client.
Instead of a plot where Google took over XMPP userbase via EEE, it just seem to me more like XMPP was a niche protocol that very few hardcore enthusiasts used, and then Google tried to add support for it in their product, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the development effort to support a feature that very few of their users actually used and abandoned it in typical Google fashion.
So, to prove my point, how many people have used XMPP here, and how many people here haven’t?
It’s still around. I’m using it right now, in fact. Makes for a pretty damn good phone service as well, in conjunction with JMP
I’m currently using it via Pidgin as well :)
Back in the day, I had an XMPP gateway running to combine my AIM, ICQ, Y! Messenger, iChat and MSN Messenger accounts into one place I could grab with the Jabber client of my choice. Eventually I used Google Talk as that client. Then they all went away.