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?

  • picnic
    10•1 year ago

    You’re not getting an objective answer to the “did most of the Gtalk/Facebook messenger users even know they were using xmpp, or care?” from lemmy/kbin/fediverse users in 2023, as most here likely do care a wee bit more of the technical and privacy matters than the average joe.

    However, I used XMPP personally via integrating it to my irc (weechat+bitlbee) so I could get all the IM services under one interface. I’m doing the same now with Matrix: I have irc, whatsapp, my smart home messages etc all forwarded to matrix.

    We also built XMPP chat at our company which I was working for back in the day. I think it was even called Jabber back then. In my opinion, encryption should’ve been more integrated to XMPP from the get go, instead of being an extension.

    XMPP/Jabber is once again a thing that could’ve been great for everyone. We could have one singular decentralized technology to IM which would’ve been open to all and interoperable. If approx 20% of the world’s population has a google account and 30% facebook account, xmpp would’ve covered 50% from those alone.

    • Margot RobbieOP
      4•1 year ago

      I know I’m not getting the perspective of the average consumer (which is also why this is the perfect audience for the “Barbie” promotion), part of me is just curious about the perspective of enthusiasts on XMPP, since I know very little about it.

      • @[email protected]
        3•1 year ago

        And also, most of the people who will want to reply to this post will have used xmpp and want to tel their story