Google abandons IM openness

There’s been a lot of speculation and misinformation about exactly how far Google is going in abandoning XMPP. I decided to spend a few minutes checking out for sure. I set up Kopete on Linux with a jabber.org account, and tested interoperability with Google Talk (in Gmail) and Google Hangouts (both web and Android). Here’s what I found: You can still receive XMPP messages and accept contact requests in Google Talk.