I’m almost 50 myself. I’m logged in to XMPP right now. I’ve used it consistently since the early 2000. 20ish years minimum. There was never a thriving ecosystem of XMPP servers. There was a lot of choice, but nothing with a big name that would appeal to the average consumer. No jabber.social or jabber.world. And no critical mass of users. The transports were ultimately a frustrating gimmick. That Microsoft and AOL constantly broke. Leaving them unreliable and undesirable to recommend others to use.
When Google rolled out Google chat based on jabber/XMPP there was a lot of hopium going around that they’d be that big name to bring critical mass. Surprise! Hindsight says no. They “defederated” their servers. The jabber/XMPP development group themselves decided to persue standardization. Which largely meant an end to the active development of the service. Standards move much slower. Imperceptibly so. With Google out, the XMPP group pursuing standardization, no “official” servers, and the advent of services like Skype discord etc. The buzz and momentum behind XMPP imploded on it’s own. Stymied by no one. Suffocated by it all.
No one killed XMPP. It simply stopped being relevant to most people.
