Notices by Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub), page 8

@arcade

An embrace, extend, extinguish strategy has to be a strategy.

And, like I said originally, it hasn't ever worked, as a strategy.

@datn @mav My numbers come from the Radicati email statistics report.

Could you put forward the meat of the argument?

I think "we're worried" is fine, but "Gmail took over email" is factually untrue.

@vesperto @cuchaz

I am not scared of anyone joining this network. *They* are coming to *us*, not the other way around.

We are a robust and resilient network. We are gaining more and more people, implementations, and communications content every single day.

We have the power in this situation. Let's start acting like it.

@phryk one possible reason is that someone in my position might have thought about this much much more than you have, and it might be you who needs to spend more time considering the topic.

Good luck on your journey!

@arcade so, if it wasn't intentional, it wasn't "embrace, extend, extinguish."

@blotosmetek definitely something to work on, then. Get to it!

@jonn so, you're saying that people should preemptively defed Meta, because Google defedding XMPP killed XMPP?

@jebba @rysiek @arcade

"One of the reasons google's chat had any momentum was because it worked with jabber."

Prove it.

@rysiek I'm sorry you're so worried!

You barged into a thread about whether embrace, extend and extinguish ever worked. I said it didn't, and you gave a bunch of examples that weren't EEE.

When I said you should check the actual topic of conversation, you said you were well aware of the definition, which you clearly weren't!

@rysiek actually, to be an embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy, it has to be a strategy.

@g right. Let's try this:

A, B and C are people with email addresses.

B has Gmail, A and C do not.

There are nine possible email messages: A to B, A to C, B to A, B to C, C to A, C to B, A to B and C, B to A and C, C to A and B.

Only 2/9 or about 22% don't go through Gmail.

"I see a lot of stuff come through Gmail" is reasonable, but it doesn't mean everybody uses Gmail.

@rysiek I think you vastly overestimate the importance of XMPP to the success, such as it was, of GTalk.

Regardless, we agree that it was not an intentional strategy to join the network, create incompatible non-standard extensions, and use that advantage to take over the network.

@Azure @arcade @rysiek but why?

What value is there to Google to kill RSS?

Why spend years and millions of dollars building and running Reader, just to destroy RSS?

This is a dumb conspiracy theory. You've got the direction of causation reversed.

@rysiek @arcade rightfully humble!

@rysiek @arcade

Google dropping XMPP wasn't the cause of the problems with that network. It was a symptom of the problems with that network.

You need to read what "embrace, extend and extinguish" means.

It doesn't mean "support an open standard for a while then drop it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish?wprov=sfla1

@mav To that anecdote with a sample size of one?

I'd say that Open Source email servers are some of the most miserable pieces of software to work with on the planet.

I have a personal email server and keeping it running suuuuuuucks.

We need better email client and server software!

@rysiek @arcade

So, in this theory, the growth of GTalk was due to its support of XMPP?

@arcade

So, your hypothesis for why XMPP isn't the default messaging system in 2023 is that Google Talk supported it for a while, then stopped?

And further, that it was an intentional strategy to destroy the XMPP network?

@arcade break that down for me.

A lot of people worry that commercial networks joining the fediverse will inevitably take over the network, "like Gmail took over email."

Except, y'know, Gmail hasn't taken over email.

There are 4.5B active email users (Radicati), 1.5B Gmail users (CNBC). About 1/3.

Email is growing faster than Gmail.

Maybe all the people you know use Gmail.

Maybe that says more about the people you know than about the state of the email network.

Email remains robust, decentralized and diverse in 2023.