Comment by AshamedCaptain

Google is _not_ forcing, only Apple is. This cannot be emphasized enough.

You can still perfectly have dozens of background TCP connections idling on Android with no issue. The only caution you need to take is to synchronize the keepalives (otherwise the radio may take stay on for too long, hitting your battery life), but this was solved back when Android was still Danger.

As evidenced by the power analysis of IM apps that was here on HN a couple weeks ago, there is no discernible advantage to using Google notifications versus just keeping your multiple TCP connections idling in the background: Conversations is a Jabber client which does the second and was practically the most power-friendly client of the entire Android ecosystem.