Microsoft to end chat for Facebook, Google in Outlook.com

Within "the next couple of weeks," Microsoft will discontinue support for Facebook Chat and Google Chat in Outlook.com, ZDNet reported.

Outlook.com customers were notified of the impending change via an e-mail message from the Outlook.com team sent on 24 February.

The software giant said the decision to drop Google Chat integration stemmed from Google's decision to discontinue the chat protocol used by the Google Talk platform.

A link to the Google decision pointed to a page noting that Google Hangouts replaced Google Talk and did not support XMPP. XMPP, stands for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, an IETF standard for instant messaging.

There was no reason given for discontinuing Facebook chat integration, but the Outlook.com team said in a message,

"We understand that this may disappoint some of our customers, but we hope that you'll try Skype for Outlook.com chat, and voice, video calling, so you can take advantage of the more robust ways to keep in touch with friends and family."