> Those millions brought in by Google and Facebook didn't care about the federated nature of an extensible messaging protocol, they wanted to talk to their friends.
Yes, and instead of using "true XMPP" to talk to their friends and contribute to its growth, Google diverted that flow of new users into its own product. Sure the growth would have been far slower without Google, but this way Google managed to steal a few users that would have joined XMPP even without Google, on the false promise of compatibility.
Instead of slow, healthy growth, what happened was fast, parasitic growth, and on top of it all it added a maintenance burden for XMPP developers trying to maintain compatibility with Google.
You say XMPP was small - that's the point! To kill competitors before they become a threat.
If Google knew how to kill a competitor's messaging platform they wouldn't be starting two new chat apps every year. I don't believe that Google decided to pick XMPP because it formed an actual threat; rather, XMPP was open source, freely available, and had a whole bunch of code all ready to go. Why invent your own if there's a free, documented protocol already out there?
WhatsApp picked XMPP as a basis for their messaging infrastructure when it started out. It never even bothered to federate with XMPP, but the technology still worked. XMPP's miserable state isn't some evil Google plot, it's a lack of user interest and a failure to effectively market the protocol. Unlike previous attempts, WhatsApp actually took off, easily overtaking Google's own fledgling messaging service, because it knew what people wanted: "chat without SMS charges". This left some space in other countries where SMS was essentially free, but nobody managed to capture interest in XMPP there either.
I know one XMPP client that everyone agrees is somewhat usable, Conversations, and it looks like development and design stopped somewhere around 2014. Absolutely nothing stood in the way of XMPP taking the place that Line, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, and all the others, but there was simply no interest in making a good product out of a federated service.
Matrix is trying again, with big companies using it instead of IRC, and it's struggling to survive in a world where Discord looks better and works better.
Yes, and instead of using "true XMPP" to talk to their friends and contribute to its growth, Google diverted that flow of new users into its own product. Sure the growth would have been far slower without Google, but this way Google managed to steal a few users that would have joined XMPP even without Google, on the false promise of compatibility.
Instead of slow, healthy growth, what happened was fast, parasitic growth, and on top of it all it added a maintenance burden for XMPP developers trying to maintain compatibility with Google.
You say XMPP was small - that's the point! To kill competitors before they become a threat.