Why is it a bad decision to think differently than you do?
I think we all have the right to privacy, not an obligation to keep all our stuff private.

I think the issue is windows software, where it's a nightmare to build anything.

Well, you know, those two ISPs cover only a small percentaje of the planet, so it's not that big of a deal. Also, if your ISP threates to cut you off, just switch to another more serious one.

I'm pretty sure lots of proyects will be moving to github/bitbucket/etc now!

I trust yahoo. They let sevices stagnate and leave them without change for years.
Google changes the UI to most of it's stuff almost yearly with almost no new funcionality, and keeps shutting down services.

I'd rather have a 5 years old GUI, and have my service shut down. (ie: reader, caldav, soon: xmpp).

You can visit millons of user's tumblrs without registering.
Oh, the faq is in the help page, and you don't need to register:
http://www.tumblr.com/help

The reason I don't use Yahoo's services is simply that it's impossible to remember your username.
Yahoo forces you to register an email if you want a yahoo account. There's two problems with that:

1. It's impossible for create a rememberable username. You need to append three digits to any username to create one that isn't taken and...
2. I don't even want an @yahoo.com email. I already have email, thanks. Just let me use my existing one as a username.

But what do those that DO science gain from putting their discoveries behing a paywal? It's not like those journals pay scientists to publish their papers.

The did mess with calendar. They're dropping support for CalDav.

The xbox has me fed up turning on every time I said "xbox on".

Oops, I think I just turned on half a dozen.

Because people don't want to have 2 console, 8 controllers, and a huge amount of cables next to their tv, instead of half that.

They're officialy dropping it. It was recently announced in an interview:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-mess
(see video, circa 5:09)

This is old news. This was one of the first comments on the "Google releases Hangouts" a few days ago.
I've lost contact with about 40% of my contacts so far. Of those whom I can still talk to, about 20% use google with an xmpp client, and the other 40% are not google users (they use some other XMPP server).

I think that part was a joke, because TFA states it's windows only.

The [very few] windows devs I know, use MS tools like C#, etc. Are there actually any android devs that run windows out there?

It's not a standard because the IETF published it. It's a standard because there are dozens of client and server implementations, and thousands of running servers out there. If google opens up their spec, it'll still be just one server. And there'd be no point to a second server out there, because they don't federate.

WLM supports XMPP for some time now, though with a custom auth mechanism. Do you googleing before arguing.
As for non mobile-friendly: {{citation needed}}. Also, whatsapp uses XMPP, and their service is the most popular on mobile platforms.