There were a bunch of people, including regular Googlers from around the company who asked about this.
Personally, I'm most grateful to the core group on the team that listened to both external and internal feedback and then went back to see how they could make things better. I understand and respect if those folks want their privacy, but I thought it was really great to see them not only change their mind, but ask about how to push more on openness in this area. At this point, Google supports open standards for calendar, contacts, and email. It's great to see CardDAV open up to everyone.
Matt, do you have any insight into whether or not there's even any internal discussion within Google about revisiting the XMPP issue regarding Hangouts, and/or publish a spec for their new protocol?
Of course I totally understand if you either don't know, or aren't allowed to comment. Just curious if it's something that's even a point of discussion or if everybody considers the issue closed, done, over, fini...
It's safe to assume that for anything that's even mildly controversial externally, there's a ton of internal discussion as well. Usually the internal discussion is even more passionate than the external discussion.
I'm an advocate for the idea that Google wants to compete on a level playing field, which leads directly to the fact that I believe Google should also support open standards and interoperability. That means that any time we aren't doing that, we need to have a really, really good reason for it. That said, after a ton of discussion about XMPP internally, I understand the team's decision and their reasons.
Thanks for sharing. It's good to know that there is (probably) at least some discussion about this stuff. If anything, maybe you could give them a little nudge in the direction of releasing a detailed spec (and a reference implementation) of the new Hangout protocol? :-)
Personally, I'm most grateful to the core group on the team that listened to both external and internal feedback and then went back to see how they could make things better. I understand and respect if those folks want their privacy, but I thought it was really great to see them not only change their mind, but ask about how to push more on openness in this area. At this point, Google supports open standards for calendar, contacts, and email. It's great to see CardDAV open up to everyone.