We're in the middle of this war between giant companies around the future of collaboration. Google, Cisco, Microsoft, etc are aggressively building marketshare for cloud services and telecom, but they're success will eventually mean that they'll run out of new customers. So they need to steal from each other.
For Microsoft, XMPP federation is a great way to contain Google and make inroads on places that are Cisco IM/phone shops. In the long run, they want to extend corporate email dominance to phone via Lync/Skype.
Google doesn't want to be a commodity. Hangouts is their secret sauce. What do they gain by being open?
"Google doesn't want to be a commodity. Hangouts is their secret sauce. What do they gain by being open?"
The support of many geeks worldwide (and subsequently their friends and customers), just as it happened until recently when their "do no evil" transformed in "screw you".
Google (gmail, gtalk etc) would have never risen to this level of popularity without them.
Sadly, many "geeks" turn a blind eye whenever Google does something like this. Google has them and it doesn't seem like either party truly cares about the other's interest.
For Microsoft, XMPP federation is a great way to contain Google and make inroads on places that are Cisco IM/phone shops. In the long run, they want to extend corporate email dominance to phone via Lync/Skype.
Google doesn't want to be a commodity. Hangouts is their secret sauce. What do they gain by being open?