[7952]

The big advantage would be in rendering embedded content using the browser engine. If someone drops a link to a youtube video into chat I should be able to play it inline without needing to use third party services like google+ or facebook that make simple consumption an act of sharing. IM should be treated as a first class citizen, and the browser is more user friendly than the OS (for desktop), and more private than the cloud.

[jeorgun]

There's no particular reason a standalone XMPP client couldn't render those— KDE-telepathy, for instance, does render youtube videos.