
What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support? - eschnou
http://eschnou.com/entry/whats-next-google--dropping-smtp-support--62-24930.html
======
claudius
Everybody knows that SMTP is old, inefficient (hey, it’s nearly plain-text!),
insecure, diversified (so many different servers to choose from!) and
generally just bad.

Clearly a closed web interface that only runs in Chrome would be much better
for everyone! Then people could always be sure with whom they communicate,
nobody could hack or social-engineer their way into other accounts, and
everyone would have to follow The Rules or they’ll have their account closed
for good.

~~~
laumars
SMTP is worse than plain text. It's plain text and base64 (which increases
file sizes by ~30%). It's a horrid protocol, but sadly it's what we're
currently stuck with.

But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP
headline is nothing more than clickbait.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
People keep banging on about "plain text, plain text" what is wrong with plain
text? And what is wrong with SMTP?

Also email attachments can be binary encoded, base64 is just one option.

People are free to say that SMTP is "bad" or "broken" but they have to say
exactly why that is the case. And "there are multiple different
implementations" is a pretty poor justification, as a SMTP replacement would
likely have the same issue (or worse).

~~~
dsr_
Multiple implementations are a strength. In fact, you won't see a good
replacement for SMTP without multiple independent implementations.

(What will it look like? I would guess it will look like a two-part service,
with one protocol for servers to talk to each other and another for clients to
talk to servers. Servers will send tiny notifications to other servers that
mail is available for their subscribers; then the receiving servers will
retrieve the mail and cache it or store it for clients. This changes the spam
problem fundamentally by requiring some persistence on the part of the sending
server.)

~~~
laumars
I would like to see the replacement of SMTP be designed along with a redesign
of e-mails themselves as well.

I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised, so there's
no more issues about which clients will render what. I'd like to see the
failure notices standardised, so that invalid e-mail addresses produce a
standard "404-like" response, and so on.

The problem isn't so much that we have multiple implementations (I agree that
can potentially be a strength). The problem is that there's very little that's
consistent across the platforms.

~~~
npsimons
_I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised_

Count me out. It wasn't even two weeks ago that we had the story here about
how The Onion was hacked because somebody clicked on an obfuscated HTML URL in
email.

~~~
laumars
While we're at it, let's all abandon HTML5 and have every browser doing their
own thing, because people occasional fall for fake anti-virus ads. </sarcasm>

We can't stop social engineering like that - it's completely unavoidable.
Which is why banks and payment providers regularly tell people not to follow
links asking for bank details (etc). Yeah it sucks that The Onion got hacked
that way, but your argument is doesn't fix that. Your argument is nothing more
than cutting of your nose to spite your face (ie advocating an inconsistent
platform for legitimate e-mails despite anchor tags working on every client
already).

At least if e-mail was completely redesigned, then we could have banks provide
a unique cert that hangs in the e-mail header and can support the authenticity
claim of the sender (I'm sure there's ways around that idea I've just
presented - but that was just off the top of my head. Any such design would
obviously need to be thoroughly thought out)

~~~
raylu
I think he's saying we should instead have text-only e-mail, because that's
both standard and has a tiny attack surface.

~~~
laumars
That doesn't fix anything either. Many clients make URLs clickable (even with
text-only emails) and even if those clients didn't do that, someone will just
copy and paste a URL into the address bar without looking. Given that the
average user isn't an expert on domain names, it's not actually that hard to
trick them into thinking that face.book.com isn't the same as facebook.com
(and even those that are savvy enough to know the difference might misread the
link and get fooled occasionally).

So like I said before, it's impossible to prevent social engineering.

~~~
raylu
It's impossible to prevent all cases of social engineering with a purely
technical solution, this is true. But that doesn't mean that we should
disregard how much easier phishing attacks are with the advent of HTML mail.
The goal here is not so much to stop social engineering dead in its tracks as
to prevent some of the low-effort attacks that do happen.

~~~
laumars
But again, I refer you to my HTML5 example. Should we dumb down what websites
are capable of rendering to prevent social engineering via the web?

What you're proposing is making things harder to work in the hope that human
intelligence will prevail. But the problem is that these cases are where human
intelligence has failed, so making things harder is just counter productive.
And this is why you can't prevent social engineering from happening and why
crippling technology and creating a worse user experience just to try catch a
few fringe cases is just a backwards approach to handling the issue.

Instead what we need is methods in place to verify the authenticity of senders
and better education to users so that don't make silly mistakes like
installing random "virus scanners" from web ads or clicking strange URLs in
e-mails (and the URLs themselves could be standardised. eg no sub-domains
become clickable, to prevent people falling for face.book.com).

~~~
npsimons
_But again, I refer you to my HTML5 example. Should we dumb down what websites
are capable of rendering to prevent social engineering via the web?_

Strawman; we're talking about email, where the combination of header forging
and HTML mis-labeling are what's really dangerous, not web pages.

~~~
laumars
No, we're talking about social engineering and the principle is the same
regardless of whether it's e-mail or websites. You take a page -be that of an
e-mail or website- make it look legitimate, and get people to follow dodgy
links or download dodgy programs. You see the same thing with Facebook malware
as well (which spreads by social engineering). So maybe we should close
Facebook apps down.....actually, I'd be in favour of that last point hehehe.

Claiming this is a straw man argument only demonstrates how unwilling you are
to view this from another's perspective. At least I've listened to your
arguments and come up with potential workarounds.

------
pjmlp
Youth geeks are just discovering that corporations are all alike.

Nothing that the older timers don't already know since the mainframe days.

Google is just arriving to the point where the shareholders have more to say
than whatever a few geeks scattered around the world might think.

~~~
RexRollman
Well put, which is why I have reverted to using Google solely for search.

~~~
RestlessMind
Which smartphone do you use?

~~~
RexRollman
I use a dumb phone. I don't have a personal need for anything more.

------
markus2012
1\. Google creates a service and gives it away for free.

2\. Most alternative providers of the service die. The only ones that still
provide the service must also give it away for free and leverage the service
in some other way.

3\. Google kills service.

Someone might try to fill the void, but why would they? Google might just
provide the service again for free.

I wonder how much of the economy has been lost by giving away services for
free. There's something wrong with the model where you can give something away
for free so you can learn more about them to serve ads.

I remember a time when a certain government would buy a factory in another
country, decrease prices to destroy all of the local competition and then lay
off all of the factory workers and shut the factory down.

Interesting times for companies like Google.

~~~
snaky
_There's something wrong with the model where you can give something away for
free so you can learn more about them to serve ads_

There's nothing wrong with the model while Google or another corp do it for
their own money (unlike gov.).

People are freely and willingly agree to see the ads in exchange to using free
services. If you think they all wrong, that's just your personal opinion.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _If you think [X], that's just your personal opinion._

 _< meta>_ You're saying "I don't trust your opinion" without any
justification beyond asserting that personal opinions have low status. If you
suspect Markus can't back his claims up, then ask him to. Also remember that
if you hold a contrary opinion, then one of you two (possibly both) is
necessarily wrong as a simple matter of fact. _< /meta>_

When Markus said "there's something wrong with X", I guess he's actually
saying "X does harm". In the case of Gmail, I'm inclined to believe that it
_does_ harm: better brain hacking (ads) through breaches of privacy —Google is
effectively reading your mail. Also the "destroying the economy" effect may be
quite real, though I think it's probably limited to short term damages.

> _People are freely and willingly agree to […]._

You're assuming people are rational. They're not. People freely and willingly
agree to bamboozle themselves all the time, sometimes creating a network
effect that will make it easier for _more_ people to bamboozle themselves.
Some people gamble too much and owe money to a Mafioso. Others join the
Scientology. Or start doing drugs in a moment of weakness. Or use proprietary
software, and eventually lose data. Etc, etc.

About the specific case of "cloud" centralized services (web mail, video
streaming, blogs, social networks…), the main harm is a progressive loss of
privacy, and increased dependence. I think it all stemmed from the thought
that people are consumers, not creators. Technically this got translated by
"people hardly need to upload". Hence the 'A' in "ADSL". Symmetry was
sacrificed at the altar of download rate. Since then, any hope to have a
decent server at home was basically crushed. Some providers even prevent you
to host a server, or to send e-mail (they typically force you to go through
their crappy, rate-limited relays).

Anyway, people did create. They wrote. They made videos. They shared their
life with friends. And they continued to send e-mail. Well, the only practical
solution to do all that was to use convenient centralized services. No way any
given person would have enough bandwidth to host one's popular video. So it
all goes to YouTube, creating a serious imbalance in the data transfer rates
that makes some network operators uneasy.

Oh, there's an exception: Bit-torrent. It is an incredibly convenient _and_
scalable way to share big files on the internet. And it's quite popular. Alas,
because of asymmetric bandwidth, it doesn't work nearly as well as it should.
Which is basically why we used MegaUpload —until "Big IP" shut it down. With
symmetric bandwidth, it would have had no use, and Big IP couldn't have
annoyed so many people.

We _could_ have had symmetric bandwidth, convenient servers at home and all
the privacy and independence that they can give us. However the market,
people's preference for short term convenience, and network effects conspired
against it. And the worse is, it works even if each individual choice _is_
rational. Take the web mails: it could be rational _for you_ to use it, but
then, you participate in a network effect that get people to only accept email
from the big players. This has already started: mails sent from home are often
dismissed as spam right away. Most such mail _is_ spam, but the (possibly
rational) rejection is hurting the legitimate users.

------
sgoody
I'm pretty disappointed by the recent dropping of standards that Google has
been doing.

I'm quite a sceptical person and I've never been a fan of any big corp, but
Google has been the one that I've trusted my data in the most and that I've
been happiest with.

I still trust them with some of my data, but I'm rapidly losing faith in them
and in fact I'm starting to think that Microsoft are a more "open" company...
and I'd consider myself a one-time Microsoft hater, but I think they've turned
things around.

The only reason I'm still with them for email/calendars is that they're just
so very very good. But they're privacy policies for GDrive scare me, so I
don't use that.

Frankly though, I'm starting to think that my data and services would be
better off with Microsoft now...

~~~
esolyt
>I'm starting to think that Microsoft are a more "open" company...

I am disappointed too. But why is Microsoft more open? Does Microsoft have an
open messaging protocol that I don't know of? Or an open source operating
system? Or an open source browser? The last I checked, they were forcing
manufacturers to ship computers with locked down bootloaders so you can't
install your own operating system.

>But they're privacy policies for GDrive scare me, so I don't use that.

Can you clarify exactly what point in the privacy policy you are talking
about?

~~~
lstamour
Locked down boot loaders? The spec says you must be able to change it. And you
can. Same with Chromebooks (dev switches) and Macs (rEFIt or boot camp). This
is about security of the boot process for those who desire it. TPM is a
feature just like Chrome's default support for DRM now. Necessary evils or
useful security, all depends on who is in control. What makes service lockdown
worse is you're not in control if you let someone else run it. Google should
have at least given a replacement protocol. Make XMPP better: push the web
forward!

~~~
sp332
Actually in order to get a "Made for Windows RT" sticker on an ARM device,
OEMs must enable "Secure Boot" and disallow changes.
[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/microsoft-to-lock-
out-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/microsoft-to-lock-out-other-
operating-systems-from-windows-8-arm-pcs-and-devices/10132)

------
leephillips
Google never had SMTP support. They run services that look like and advertise
themselves as SMTP but violate the parts of the relevant RFPs that they don't
find convenient: <http://lee-phillips.org/gmailRewriting/>

~~~
bjourne
They are even worse when it comes to IMAP. So if you have a sizable gmail
account it is virtually impossible to switch to another client because gmail's
labels doesn't at all match how IMAP folders behave. But it is hard to
complain about a free service and it's quite possible that they couldn't have
implemented all gmails features the way they did if they stuck to the IMAP
standard.

------
jpswade
Don't forget, they tried "open" with Google Wave, which was a total flop.
Developers did not buy into it.

You can't expect to have it both ways, especially since Apple has proven that
a closed infrastructure (walled garden) works.

~~~
Turing_Machine
They've tried "closed" with Google+, which is also a total flop.

~~~
philwelch
Yes, but they haven't realized that yet!

------
kentrado
Embrace, extend, extinguish.

------
zimbatm
Well it's quite clear that for Google, Google+ is where all the communication
should be going on and Gmail is the legacy.

------
Uchikoma
Google is the new Microsoft. Nothing new. Move on.

~~~
RestlessMind
Who is the new Google then?

------
RLN
I have been trying to move away from Google services for a long time,
unfortunately it is very tightly integrated in my life (Gmail, Android etc.)
and I am both lazy and loath to spend money. Google is fine for now but I
won't hesitate to jump ship if I find myself looking at better options.

~~~
unhammer
You don't have to spend very _much_ money. I pay Fastmail $40 a year for 10GB
ad-free IMAP+webmail (+2GB file storage that I never use, but I guess that's
nice too), I find that very reasonable. It works great with K9-mail on Android
(and any IMAP mail client I should think).

I have OwnCloud on my home server with a free SSL cert from StartSSL (you need
a domain though if you want to use StartSSL, but that shouldn't cost you
much). This gives me contacts and a calendar, which I sync to my Android phone
(I also sync the owncloud calendar to my Emacs orgmode files over caldav,
giving me two-way sync between Emacs and Android; it's also possible to sync
carddav contacts into Emacs, but I haven't tried that yet).

OwnCloud also has a code editor with syntax highlighting, but it's no Google
Docs killer yet (but then, I prefer writing TeX with Emacs anyway).

Once it's up and running, it's just as featureful as the Gmail+Google
Contacts+Google Calendar combo. If you have android, you do need a Google
account for downloading from the Play store, but 1) you can use a throwaway
account for that 2) there's also f-droid and other alternative stores.

I switched to Gnus+Gwene for RSS feeds, but I wouldn't recommend that unless
you really like Emacs. In any case, Google Reader is dead and new alternatives
are showing up everywhere.

I use Firefox sync instead of Chromium. Apparantly owncloud can work as an FF
sync server, but I haven't tried that yet.

DuckDuckGo fills most of my search needs better than Google ever did, though I
do use its !scholar and !i keywords which redirect me back to Google's
Scholar, Image searches.

It is possible to wean yourself off Google, and even third-party control of
your data in general, but it takes a bit of effort. I find it rewarding though
:)

------
reidrac
Can someone confirm Google is killing XMPP and its server-to-server
federation?

The Verge says Hangouts is not using XMPP but does it mean that XMPP (Google
Talk) is definitely going away?

~~~
eschnou
Well, the quote from The Verge is the following: "Singhal says Google had to
make the difficult decision to drop the very 'open' XMPP standard that it
helped pioneer."

~~~
reidrac
That's for the new Hangouts service. If you can keep using XMPP with your
Gmail account, then it's not that terrible. I don't know if it's a forced
replacement.

We may need to wait for Google's announcement.

~~~
Shooti
"Not federated support, but supports interop with XMPP clients. Meaning you
can continue to use XMPP clients to log in to Google Talk and those messages
will interop with folks on Hangouts."

[https://plus.google.com/107968525907303243288/posts/HFe3W7A9...](https://plus.google.com/107968525907303243288/posts/HFe3W7A9Dor)

So Google Talk will continue to live on (which allows them to implement some
sort of server side functionality which converts a Gtalk message to a Hangout
message when both members have activated Hangouts), it's just not actively
being worked on.

So really the only effective change is the Chrome extension and Android apps
have been replaced so you have to use a 3rd party Jabber client if you do want
to use GTalk on those platforms.

~~~
thwarted
Being forced to use a third party client will hopefully improve the quality of
the third party clients. I hate how the current gtalk android app forces you
to see/use all Google accounts configured on your phone and there is no way to
reliably turn off never logging into one (say, an account you are trying to
deprecate). Unfortunately, every other XMPP client for android has some
serious deficiency (often a terrible UI).

~~~
reidrac
I use Xabber and I'm very happy with it:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xabber.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xabber.android)

But if I can't talk with my contacts using a Gmail account, then is not that
useful.

------
pfortuny
Yes, something like this:

"Our users do not feel the need for SMTP so much as to make it profitable, we
are pursuing other options, hence our SMTP servers will be closed down in 3
months' time. You can continue communicating using Google+ or Gmail."

Honestly, they look very much like losing some real-world perspective. I mean
real as in 'the table holding my keyboard'.

~~~
snaky
If that was "Our users do not feel the need for Gmail so much as to make it
profitable, we are pursuing other options, hence our GMail servers will be
closed down in 3 months' time. You can continue communicating using Google+."
I'd say yeah, they are losing some real-world perspective.

------
jagermo
I'm using Google apps for my business account and i am really annoyed that
they are still not able to provide a sync tool (or a direct exchange access)
for Outlook 2013. I know I could use SMTP or IMAP, but I also want to sync
calendar and contacts (that is, in fact, the reason I upgraded to the pro
version of apps in the first place).

Don't get me wrong, it is completely ok for Google to disable free stuff as
they want. I would, however, prefer that they support their paying customers
better. Or, at least, offer an option to got premium and pay for the stuff we
would like to use.

------
jkn
This is a good summary of a sad trend at Google. They fall from high, so we
feel it unusually strongly. I still hope these are defensive moves as Google
reacts to perceived threats from Facebook and others. I still hope they will
eventually open up Google+ for interoperability.

It is good that people keep the pressure on Google regarding openness, it
gives weight to the voice of the many employees there who want to do the right
thing.

------
Aloha
I'm not seeing in the link about them dropping XMPP support, not in the source
link the author links to. I see them not building XMPP support into hangouts,
but its not the same thing, hangouts are not an IM thing, they are a web
conferencing thing.

------
Semaphor
Okay, I'm slightly confused.Can someone please confirm if the following still
works:

I'm logged into G+

I'm logged into GTalk with a Jabber client.

Someone messages me using the google web interface.

I get the message in my Jabber client.

~~~
Zikes
In my experience, you get the message in both the Jabber client and Hangout.

------
rietta
I am not 100% certain I understand the difference between XMPP support and
XMPP federation support. I assume though if they are dropping the support to
route between chat providers than my websites' Zopim chat widget that I use
for live support will no longer be able to talk with my Google Talk and thus I
will no longer be able to text chat with customers on my websites through my
Android-based smart phone. If so, that's a real bummer.

------
human_error
Don't give them ideas!

------
Pxtl
No SMS support, no XMPP support. The new "Google Hangouts" messenger will be
the next Google+/Buzz.

------
lettergram
They are trying to grab more of the market by making Apple/Microsoft suffer
(mostly Microsoft), welcome to the world of business. Good for them.

------
tomrod
Does this mean I'll need to leave pidgin/finch?

------
Systemic33
_Grabs popcorn_

I'm seriously just waiting for the anti-trust cases to roll in. Isn't this
just like the 90's with Microsoft?

Same shit, different names.

------
tomkarlo
This is the slippery slope fallacy. Don't fall into actually arguing for or
against it. The NRA does the same thing when it claims all gun rules lead to a
gun ban.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope>

------
lani
!!!!! Don't give them ideas !!!!!

------
recoiledsnake
Wait, so Google is dropping XMPP support because Outlook.com is supporting it
to allow Gtalk users to chat on Outlook.com, so in order to perpetuate the
GMail/GTalk lock-in by caging the Gtalk chat users to GMail, they're dropping
standards support and killing access to all XMPP clients in existence
including non-Microsoft ones? And they announce this right when Microsoft
spent all the time and effort to allow Outlook.com users to chat with Gtalk
friends and is rolling out that feature? Am I right? Someone tell me I am
wrong!

That sounds unbelievable, coming from the supposedly open company even though
it's coming on the heels of them trying lock out millions of Windows Phone
users from Youtube by sending a C&D takedown on the app.

I guess open standards don't work when you're the guy trying to lock in users.
If Google had a lock-in on Office products, looks like they will ditch "open
data" and "open standards" in a heartbeat. They should change their policy to
"open when it's convenient for us to flog it for PR purposes, else closed, oh
and please store all your office documents on our cloud, we make it really
convenient.".

This is not Open vs. Closed anymore, this is Corporations vs. Individuals,
except for Mozilla which is becoming less powerful because Google uses its ad
dollars to bundle Chrome with Flash, Acrobat and Java updates by default
thereby reducing Firefox's share and has the nice side effect of reducing
Google's payments to Mozilla for searches.

And Web DRM? Of course it's coming because IE, Chrome and Safari are going to
be supporting it fully with 80% marketshare and people will blame Firefox if
Netflix doesn't work in it and recommend you switch to Chrome to see movies!
iOS, Android and Windows Phone, BBOS will add support for 100% tablet and
phone support for the DRM. Firefox and Opera are powerless to stop it. We have
already seen this play out with th h.264 HTML5 video support in Chrome fiasco
when Google said it would drop H.264 from Chrome but did not and Mozilla was
left holding the short end of the stick and had to recently had to eat crow
and add support for H264. The web is owned by the corporates, not individuals
anymore, there was some hope when Firefox was at 40%, not anymore. And we all
willingly gave them the power by believing in "open" and "do no evil" and
switching in droves.

I can picture Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix etc
executives sitting at a bar and giving toast to each other and laughing while
we whine and debate fruitlessly with vitriol on these forums. All their stock
valuations are up recently!

~~~
VikingCoder
So, to be clear, Google is supposed to make video chat with groups of people,
recording to YouTube, desktop sharing, and Google Docs live editing work with
XMPP? Or else they're evil?

~~~
adrinavarro
I don't care too much about video chat, YouTube, etc, etc… Just about the
plain old XMPP/Jabber user-to-user that was the base for Google Talk and that
has been around for many years. The ability to talk with users from different
providers.

That is being open. Without XMPP federation, we're effectively locked into
Google. And it's just a matter of time that they drop XMPP altogether and we
have to use their own protocol for chatting.

~~~
kyrias
Considering that they only enabled federation again a little while ago it's
not like that's something new.

~~~
lucid00
They enabled federation months after Google Talk came out actually.

~~~
kyrias
And then they disabled it a good while ago except for a few servers that they
had whitelisted, thus my "again".

------
yanw
Hyperbole aside (they won’t drop SMTP) that is a very narrow and unfair view
on the situation, they at least tried for years to make it work with these
standards and failed.

They were obviously the last ones doing so, and this new approach is mainly
about modernising their infrastructure.

Is there anyone else of any consequence out there who is building these sorts
of messaging apps on top of XMPP?

Google was the last one standing, and it just didn't work out.

And why cherry pick “standards”? how about web standard? Chromium is a very
big commitment to them.

Edit: I should be more specific as I meant a federated implementation of XMPP.

~~~
subway
Lync 2013 fully supports XMPP federation. Cisco's IM offerings support XMPP
federation. IBM's Sametime supports XMPP federation.

Numerous organizations have deployments of these and other, smaller XMPP IM
servers.

As for cherry picking standards, isn't that exactly what you're doing with
your statement on Chromium and web standards?

~~~
snaky
Lync looks really nice with that

 _edit:_ XMPP federation feature is not available in Ofice365 Lync options,
that's sad

~~~
subway
To be fair, while the Office suite itself is pretty decent these days, Office
365 is terrible. Microsoft is still very much a software company and not a
services company.

~~~
snaky
If you are talking about Office web-apps, maybe. But what is wrong with their
hosted Exchange and SharePoint?

------
thoughtcriminal
Stop relying on Google for everything. Stop building things on Google. No
company should have such a big impact on your life and society as a whole.

Several months ago I moved everything to the Microsoft ecosystem. In some ways
its trading one taskmaster for another, but if we don't exercise our freedom
of choice in the marketplace we soon won't have a choice.

~~~
wtetzner
> No company should have such a big impact on your life

> Several months ago I moved everything to the Microsoft ecosystem.

So now Microsoft has such a big impact on your life?

Wouldn't it make more sense to spread things out over a variety of services?

~~~
thoughtcriminal
_Wouldn't it make more sense to spread things out over a variety of services?_

For reasons of workflow efficiency, no.

~~~
wtetzner
You're right, but that conflicts with "No company should have such a big
impact on your life."

------
DanI-S
Just because something is Open doesn't mean it is worth supporting when most
people don't care about or use it anymore.

Web Search Interest for RSS; down 78% from its peak in 2006:

<http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=RSS>

Web Search Interest for XMPP; down 33% from its peak in 2010:

<http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=XMPP>

As Bob Dylan once said: _the times, they are a-changin'_.

~~~
ernesth
And with SMTP down 80% from its top in 2004 or imap down 58%, the question of
the op should seem perfectly legitimate to you.

~~~
DanI-S
Clearly not, since SMTP and IMAP are still in far greater use than RSS and
XMPP ever were. But do you think that question will never be legitimate? Will
we still be using SMTP in 2113?

Google is planning to be around for a long time. What percentage of the
resources of _your_ organization do you devote to supporting old technologies
in limited use?

~~~
ernesth
Of course, IMAP and SMTP might be replaced by better protocols in the future
(as POP3 was). However, my point was that the fact that the search trend for a
protocol is downhill does not mean it is no longer used and should be
scrapped. I argue that XMPP is in wider use than it has ever been. And that
RSS has not been replaced by anything yet. Hence stopping their support in
favour of a locked proprietary platform is bad and explaining this move by
google trends is absurd.

