[anonymoushn]

It is worse. If you try to run an online IM aggregator like the Meebo of old, Microsoft (Skype) will block your IPs and Blizzard (BNet chat) or Facebook (WhatsApp) will sue you off the face of the earth.

What's more, many services in this category have recently gone from trying to make the world better to trying to make it worse. eBuddy and imo.im shut down their IM aggregators entirely to build their own private IM networks, which, of course, are interoperable with nothing.

Disclaimer: I worked at imo.im

[pzxc]

I tried to log onto my IM client (Pidgin) and found that my google account had been disabled. I clicked their contact/appeal link, and the response I received gave no information whatsoever -- just repeated the same message to review the policies for over a dozen Google services to try and figure out on my own what I might have done to get my account disabled.

The google account I created 4 months ago to use for IM (over gtalk XMPP) is only used for this one thing -- Pidgin IM with my coworkers. 2 of my coworkers google accounts they created for this purpose were also disabled on the same day. When I created a new google account, it was disabled within an hour.

My normal personal google account I use for gmail, and my business google account I use for google apps, still works without a hitch. The only thing I can assume, is that Google no longer allows you to use them exclusively for XMPP instant messaging - unless you use their google talk interface built into gmail.

Especially frustrating because there is no way to tell if this is true. I'm just taking a guess, because that's all I can do. If there's some other reason my account might have been disabled, there's no way for me to find out. Now I'm worried about the lifespan of my other google accounts. Don't really know what to do, because Google won't give me any information about what I did wrong. But it makes me afraid they might one day shut down my gmail account also, without telling me why or giving me any means to find out why.

Some google products I like, and some I don't. I hate google+, for example. But webmail is something I rely on, and until yesterday, gmail was such a slick implementation that I had no reason to investigate using anything else. Now I realize relying on a behemoth corp for something that's mission-critical (to me) may no longer be acceptable.

It's ironic and a little bit weird (in a Twilight Zone kind of way), that Google seems to be behaving more and more like the Microsoft of old, and yet I'm watching the annual MS developer conference that's taking place this week (channel9.msdn.com for the video), and the things they're doing -- git support in team foundation server, universal apps built in JS that work on pc/tablet/phone/xbox (and maybe ios/android soon through cooperation with xamarin), open-sourcing the .net compiler, etc -- make them seem like more like the google of a decade ago.

Creepy. I'm not sure how to react.

[sillysaurus3]

One possibility is that you and your coworkers are creating multiple google accounts which are being used from the same IP (your work's IP) simultaneously, and since there isn't any history (like email, search, etc) on those accounts then you're setting off Google's spam detector.

Not a good situation. I agree that it sucks. But... well, honestly and unfortunately, your best bet is to write a blog post about the injustice and hope HN picks it up.

[anonymoushn]

This is a good idea. As far as I know, HN is Google's primary support channel. I am looking forward to the post.

[sirkneeland]

It's the inevitable turn of the wheel of history. The company on top inevitably succumbs to the desire to add some tie-in here, some lock-in there, some EEE all over... Meanwhile the company with less to lose sees less risk in opening up whatever they have to get traction...the only thing that changes is the name of the companies involved, and definitely not the human nature of the people running them.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As of right now Google is still a considerably better and more accomplished OSS citizen than Microsoft. They deserve applause and success (and have certainly gotten plenty of both!). But in another few product cycles? Who knows...

[gcb0]

Uh, didn't Google announce a long time ago that they shut down the xmpp end points because it was only used by spammers? Yeah the internet revolted for the 2 usual minutes but then a kitten passed by...

[joosters]

Do you know why imo dropped their interopability? Were they pushed or did they really believe that they could strike out on their own?

[anonymoushn]

I have not been at imo recently enough to say. Georges talked to Time about it[0]. My guess is that nobody has been given $19B for making the world more open and connected, only for making yet another walled garden.

[0]: http://time.com/13461/why-imo-dropped-third-party-im-support...