Sorry for the language, but WTF GOOGLE? Meebo has been around since forever (well, actually 2005) when it was only a web messenger and used by a LOT of people whenever you couldn't or wouldn't want to install a native messaging app, or messaging was blocked on your network. I actually know people that used Meebo exactly for that reason, no installation required and furthermore if you created yourself a Meebo account, you had all your different messaging protocols available and you had logs wherever/whenever you wanted/needed them.
It makes me really sad to see this piece of internet history (if one can call it that since it's not that old) getting axed, especially getting axed by a company this big which could surely afford to keep those servers running (maybe a meebo engineer could chime in on that since I have no idea what it takes to keep these running).
Surely meebo started changing its business angle quite a while ago but I don't think they would have cut the service that made them what they are today. That said, I really hope Google keeps its fingers of ANY service I enjoyed in the past.