Thing is, as Larry said, they support open messaging but why should they do so with companies that don't reciprocate? Last week, Microsoft decided to take advantage of gtalk federated XMPP to make it usable inside Outlook, this is awesome. However, did they make skype usable inside of gmail? No. So Microsoft is happy to use google's messaging federated openness but refuses to share their messaging with Google which gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. As Larry said, they support openness but not to the point of shooting themselves in the foot by giving Microsoft a commercial advantage by integrating gtalk in Outlook while there's no way for Google to do so with Microsoft's Skype.
I think this is pretty fair from Google to defend themselves. And it really takes nerves from Microsoft for complaining about someone blocking them on their messaging network when they have been the king of blocking messaging network with MSN and Skype. Come on.
I prefer it when someone showcases their willingness to be 'the nicer guy' by opening up while the others are closing down. Like allowing to export your GMail contacts, while Facebook won't go the other way around.
I always find Microsoft complaining to be hypocritical, they are usually committing a similar overreach towards a competitor themselves. But still, where are the 'good guys'?
I know, that would be naïve, this is business.
Think about this: Microsoft spent a fair amount of resources integrating with gtalk, now they can't use it. The only way for them to gain access is to open up their own platforms. Once they do, then everyone is on a more level playing field.
The days of Microsoft shafting the competition through lock-in and anti-competitive behaviour is fast coming to an end. I'm not shedding any tears.
Why would Google want to invest resources on giving Microsoft an unfair advantage over themselves? Microsoft being jerks is the rule since that open letter Bill Gates sent to the Homebrew Computer Club.
In other words, why would you invite a guest that is known to steal stuff and not flush toilets into your home?
That said, if Google keeps locking down all their former open products/platforms, I will be fleeing ship.
If Hangouts (which replaces Gtalk) drops XMPP support, I see no reason to keep using it.
They don't know. Many of those people use multiple instant messengers in parallel, some even use messenger that speak multiple protocols. If these people knew they could interoperate all those, they'd find it awesome.
BTW, drm has nothing to do with interoperation. At least nothing negative, because it enables proprietary content to be delivered in a platform-neutral fashion. Thus killing one more reason to use/create proprietary browser plugins.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what happened here, but right now this looks like a perfect example of "see, this is why we can't have nice things," played out in the real world.
But Google is slowly giving me more and more reason to jump ship.
[1] Application I will miss that Google has not already killed (or is going to).
Given Google's service shutdowns, dropped support for protocols, and the horror stories of seemingly accidental account closures with no recourse, I simply cannot trust Google with something as critical as my email.
The only downside to the fastmail mail is you need ~200 spams learned before the bayseian filter kicks in, so the first two days were a bit "noisy" for me. After that, though, it reduced the ~10 spams per day that would make it through gmail down to 1 every other day.
