Also, I doubt that Google wanted to destroy XMPP. They simply needed a chat then noticed it's crap for mobile devices. They wanted to offer their users seemless migration to the new proprietary protocol.
I was sad that Google stopped to use an official standard, but there are many better free options left.
kpw@kbin.social 11 months ago
XMPP works great on mobile devices today. Google could have easily developed and published such extensions themselves.