Google closed down their Jabber gateway because they couldn’t stop the endless flood of spam into their userbase. If they had instead required device identifier attestations to accompany all Jabber messages, they could have left that API open for everyone to use, and simply banned device identifiers used for spamming. I wish they’d done so, instead of just giving up and closing their doors to Jabber.

Do you have any good source on why Google decided to shut down their XMPP service? I'd really like to read about it.

Not sure about the spam thing, after all they also provide a federating email service.

This article has some context and links to original sources: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-talk-to-...

How much effort/development have they put in to the spam detection on Gmail?

If you have the ability to detect spam in emails you can probably also detect spam in chat messages.

I used Google Talk pretty much since the day it was released, and I don't recall any "endless flood of spam".

This idea that we need to rely on big Google to protect us is insane. Just make it so that messages from unknown contacts are not as annoying or even hidden entirely unless you go explicitly looking for them.

You don't need to stop federation. You don't need device attestation. These don't benefit the user. They are only there to give the platforms more control.

I used Google Talk actively at the time. Don't recall any spam.

How hard is it to generate new device identifiers?

How easily can you mail a Google calendar item to Google user, using non-Google software?

Doesn't it fall back to a .ics file?

Very easily. The ICS standard is supported by everything.

Calendar sorta works -- the meetings yes, but things like suggesting a new time or co-viewing calendars to find a time don't.