From PC World: Pretty soon chats in Outlook.com are going to be all Skype, all the time. Microsoft is pulling the plug on Google Talk and Facebook chat in Outlook.com. The company recently sent out email notifications to Outlook.com users to let them know about the change.
Microsoft doesn’t explain why it has decided to end Facebook Chat integration. For Google Talk, however, Microsoft blames it on “Google’s decision to discontinue the chat protocol used by the Google Talk platform.”
Google started moving away from Google Talk in favor of Hangouts in May 2013—ironically the same month that Microsoft added Google Talk to Outlook.com. Unlike Talk, which uses the open XMPP protocol, Hangouts is proprietary and unavailable to multi-chat clients. However, Google has continued to support Talk and has yet to announce when it might shut down the XMPP-based service. Facebook is also discontinuing its use of XMPP.
Microsoft added Skype integration to Outlook.com in August 2013.
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