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? :-)
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.