Voice to End all third party support - End of GVMAX?

[Jerry]

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/11/04/merging-of-google-voice-and-hangouts-will-result-shutting-down-all-3rd-party-voice-apps-in-may-2014/

So Google is ending Google Voice as we know it and merging it into hangouts - They intend to end all third party application support. Will this mean the end of GVMAX? I wonder how it will work with Sprint voice integration.

Has anyone already mentioned/looked into this?

[gvmax]

I had a quick look, and I am not sure if GTalk notification will continue to work.
I rely on AppEngine's XMPP support and don't know if that is going away or not.

[Jerry]

I believe that your XMPP may continue to work as it is third party, but my concern is that they may take away the ability to have hangouts sent to a 3rd party IM via the current standards.

In any case, we could (hopefully) still use web-based hangouts. Maybe they'll come out with a more localized app. In either scenario, our IM's may stop functioning the way they currently are. :(