It doesn't feel like we've moved backwards. It feels as if we just remained in the stone age of instant messaging. Even Google who pretended to be the "white knight" of IM, betrayed everyone by dropping XMPP federation in Hangouts and by not opening the Hangouts protocol.
I personally just use XMPP. I don't care about 5+ walled garden services and I'm not interested in proliferating them any further by participating. If my contacts aren't on XMPP - I simply don't communicate with them through IM. There is always e-mail for such cases.
If any other open and better successor to XMPP will come along - I'll consider switching or using it in addition. But so far there is simply nothing else out there.
I personally just use XMPP. I don't care about 5+ walled garden services and I'm not interested in proliferating them any further by participating. If my contacts aren't on XMPP - I simply don't communicate with them through IM. There is always e-mail for such cases.
If any other open and better successor to XMPP will come along - I'll consider switching or using it in addition. But so far there is simply nothing else out there.