[FSF] Supporter item: Google abandons XMPP for instant messaging

[Zak Rogoff]

### Google abandons XMPP for instant messaging

*By Parker Higgins at the EFF, from May 22nd*

In several places around the Web, the company is replacing the
existing "Talk" platform with a new one called "Hangouts" that sharply
diminishes support for the [free] messaging protocol known as XMPP (or
sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable
the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a
switch from [free] protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step
backward for many users.

  * <https://u.fsf.org/hx>

This comes in light of our recent [blog
post](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/google-reinstates-federated-instant-messaging)
commending Google for reinstating federation on their Talk platform,
after they took it down as a crude security measure.