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Google Reader + Google Talk (the chat app) were incredible. I had an ancient Blackberry Bold 9000 with 128MB RAM on which Gtalk absolutely flew. It's shocking how laggy modern chat apps are by comparison.

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It was also incredible how standards-compliant they were. Google Reader was feeding on RSS data, and Google Talk was a XMPP/Jabber client that respected federation and all that. Google was even pivotal for the development of Jingle, XMPP's VoIP extension. Peak Web 2.0.

Back when the Internet was for internetworking sites together, not just a dumb pipe to connect you to walled gardens protected by impressive moats & highest of walls.

> It's shocking how laggy modern chat apps are by comparison.

Also how little content they can actually fit on screen. When you optimize for press release photos everyone suffers.

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