Embrace Extend Extinguish, the root of Electronic Evils. Hopefully it doesn't happen with IRC as it has with other lovely parts of electronic history. Microsoft was the origin of the term with their browser and OS products of old, yet it has been unfortunately more and more relevant with Google, particularly email and android openness (gmail only features and Google play services, respectively).
That didn't really answer the question that was asked. IRC is an open protocol. Whats your fear?
There are some seriously paranoid people on HN these days, and it is rather disenchanting to have to sift through all the negativity. Failure to embrace new things and new ways of doing things is a surefire way to irrelevancy.
