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?
We used XMPP for chat (OpenFire) at my work for a while. I used to use it in one of those multi-protocol chat clients (it was Trillian, if I recall).
Trillian was the shit! I always wondered if they stole my information or it was a virus, but the combining all the stupid services into one with an the quality of life improvements was fantastic!
You remember their little multicolored round glass minimize, maximize, close buttons? It was like yellow, blue, red iirc?
It was eye opening and made me realize how nice things COULD be.