Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. So since the browser already is the only chat client tons of people use, why not make it a client for a Free/Open chat system instead of Facebooks chat system, that they control, censor, give access to to NSA, etc.

> Remove their like-buttons from your pages!

I agree we should do this. But that won't help people keep in contact with their friends. And so it won't change the thing I'm focusing on here.

"Is a" and "has a" are worlds apart.

I just dont think XMPP fulfills the uncontrolled and uncensored and surveillence resistent parts. We need to look at web of trust, bitmessage and such instead, those are more fun problems than "to spite facebook".

But sure, any solution will benefit greatly if its bundled with the browser since that appears to be the only program most users actually use on their computing devices. Imagine if Tor and a tor-relay or even tor-exit-node came preconfigured with every Firefox and turned on by default. That would be fun.

I'd rephrase it. Browser is turned into a virtual operating system for millions of people already. While it can be useful, I don't really like when that trend is pushed to the extreme and everyone rushes to run everything through the browser even without clear benefits. The point of that? I always prefer standalone chat clients (as well as e-mail clients and etc.). If some chat service can't interoperate with standalone clients, it's garbage.

Facebook can by the way, since they do use XMPP. Their problem is unwillingness to support federation. They are too selfish. So I never use their service (nor do I use their social network anyway).

Those are the majority, and if we want them to use Free and Open systems (which is my whole point here), then we have to create those systems in a way normal people will start switching from the closed systems and over to the open ones. And that is only going to happen if the open systems are easier to use and more accessible than the closed ones.

I am aware of the fact that Facebook uses XMPP (I mention it in the post). Still, extremely few people use it through a client. They use it through fb.com.

It's trickier than that. There are many open and federated XMPP services around, including those with web clients / interfaces available. Options are around. It's the sabotage of federation by "big" players which is a problem (or sabotage of interoperable protocols altogether).

Being published by the IETF doesn't mean anything. The IETF has a spec for SIMPLE, too. Should we blame all XMPP networks for sabotaging that "standard"?

Why should a third party have to do something just because you don't like how they run their own networks?

Oh, really? Inaction can be damaging as well. In this case - it's sabotage. Since you bring SIMPLE, which of these major closed networks support it?

Counter-example: email.

The frontier days for this sort of communication are over for the most part. Anything that shows signs of being significant will get jumped upon by commercial entities who will try to direct it in a manner that helps their larger goals (and if we are more cynical, expressly in a manner inconvenient to their competitor's goals) potentially (in fact most likely) at the expense of the overall scheme (despite publicly doing it to "help the users/community/public".

Anything new now has forces acting to shape it (for better or, often, for worse) that email never had to contend with until it was so widespread no one entity or collection of entities could wreck it for everyone (despite the best efforts of some such entities!).

Some people are worried about Facebook taking over the internet? First of all, I'm worried about the web taking over the internet. And becoming more and more centralized in the process.

Alas, any truly distributed scheme will face the lack of symmetric bandwidth. Which is why MegaUpload ever existed in the first place: if we could upload as fast as we download, distributed networks such as Bittorent would be too damn efficient. (On average, we're ultimately limited by the smallest of the two. Upload minus download is exactly zero over a closed peer to peer network.)

Federated is not the same as peer-to-peer. While there are big providers, email is still open to anybody with a non-dynamic IP address, and the fact that almost everyone uses third-party servers doesn't change that.

Another, more realistic possibility is that a consortium arises to fight spam, and the result is that email that doesn't come from big players or registered entities will simply be ignored, on the grounds that most mail from little domains would be spam (which by the way is probably true). The next step will be about refraining themselves to send email that look like spam, never mind the freedom of speech issues that will ensue.

And voilà, we have a world without spam. Too bad I can't send email to most of my friends any more (I control my own domain name).

Now Facebook is even worse. It already took over. You could try and build a federation, but unless you can force Facebook to communicate with it, it will still be a mere competitor, which starts at the wrong side of the network effect. Just like any Facebook competitor, actually.

The biggest selling points of XMPP are that everbody already has XMPP. The counter argument that weakens this position is that everybody already has email, an IP and a phone number too.