If we still look at the messaging example, I honestly think this theory (if that really is what Google is doing) is backfiring spectacularly - the fragmented messaging standards mean that most Android users communicate using SMS, which is a laughably bad protocol in 2018. iMessage - boring old non-developed by a "startup" style-team iMessage - is so much better that I've often contemplated switching to iOS for that reason only.
The funny part is that they might be actually emulating an entire marketplace entirely within one company, but it often seems like it's a marketplace where a large entrenched lowest common denominator is the option that everyone uses and dislikes.
Google sat around not prioritizing messaging and allowed the market to not decide on any sort of standard, except in countries that standardized on WhatsApp – basically, it's all a mess of different proprietary chat apps. Google themselves couldn't even decide on which proprietary chat app to stick with for their own services. They absolutely could have been WhatsApp (or bought them) but dropped a huge ball on that.
Then you've got telecoms who are anti-innovators. Google struggled to drag them into the 21st century with RCS, and as a result Google has to run their own RCS service to make up for so many carriers not yet supporting RCS.
Google has decidedly failed to make carriers do what they want where Apple has succeeded. The launch of the original iPhone was so disruptive in the sense that Apple found a carrier willing to allow them to ditch carrier-controlled app stores, implement visual voicemail, and offer an unlimited plan that was offered at a price point palatable enough for consumers.
I once tried to activate my Nexus 5X with Verizon, and they refused to do so because it wasn't a allowlisted device. Even though the phone had CDMA radios and was compatible on a technical level, Google apparently didn't bother to work with the largest carrier in America to get it to work (at least, at the time).
The fact that iMessage is built in to Apple's messaging app isn't really any different than someone deciding to use WhatsApp or Discord for chatting. SMS/MMS just happens to live in the same app. As antiquated and horrible as it is, SMS and MMS are the current universal standard, iMessage is not, and you can't expect Apple to be forced to make it so.
That means that iMessage itself is and was never relevant to the discussion of interoperability. The interoperable standard is SMS/MMS and you still can't count on cellular telecoms to support anything better than that, including RCS.
Now we're left with a duopoly where each party involved has zero incentive to cooperate. Perhaps this is the point where government intervention is supposed to kick in. Or maybe Google and Apple can scratch each other's backs to get Apple to climb aboard the RCS train.
Google isn't really part of Apple's messaging roadmap aside from RCS (which is also not great). For the most part, for better (and absolutely worse), Google's default messaging app on Android has always been SMS. There were no cheeky attempts to weasel Google Talk or Hangouts into my texting app; they were separate things.
It's a mistake to assume that Google wants to pick a fight with carriers just because Apple does. Their goal isn't to replace SMS or use it as an obtuse marketing stunt, and whether or not that's the right or wrong decision is a hilariously irrelevant distraction to the actual problem. SMS sucks, and replacing it is either a community effort or a regulated one. Apple chose "regulated" a long, long time ago by making an insular service their replacement candidate.
WhatsApp too is a problem in it's own right; but again, it's a strawman when we're discussing Apple's specific damages (which neither Google nor Meta copy in-full). Apple uniquely uses their vertical integration to create a less competitive environment for third-parties, which is damned for scrutiny everywhere they try it. There is no reality where Google announces that WhatsApp comes preinstalled in the messaging app without immediate and legitimate antitrust bundling accusations.
He mentions in the video that when he asked Google reps why they didn't just do iMessage, they claimed it was because of anti competition fears if they forced their own proprietary message platform on everyone's device, including those from partners like Samsung which already have their own messaging apps. That sounds plausible.
Disclosure: I work at Google but not on anything related to messaging.
I think Google was in a different position than Apple in the case of messaging client. Apple has total control of the text message app on the iPhone, or Google does not. Google had to appease Samsung and likely some other cell phone makers to allow them to make their own RCS compatible app. Google took RCS and created universal profiles, and I think wants to get Apple on board with it so that there is a shared protocol between vendors.
Apple went to full proprietary stack that no one else can use, while Google went the more open protocol. Open protocols like this always tend to have a bit more headache, and we're seeing that with RCS. Especially when some of the players are cell service providers.
If the EU open protocol legislation ever pans out, I wonder how that would impact iMessage and RCS.
Exactly it's the iOS app called "Messages" that is too powerful for Google's liking. Google uses an article about iMessage as a social network to make it seem like they are the victims for not out-competing the "Messages" app.
It's been said here already that gchat had the features that could be been integrated into Android's SMS app, add end-to-end encryption and they would have crushed the iPhone.
The carriers are idiots. It's where innovation goes to die.
We had to pull them kicking and screaming into the smart phone and data era. (Remember When AT&T sent a paper copy of every image you downloaded on your iPhone in a bill?)
Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms at all. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand.
The other issue is Apple. For as much as they claim "privacy is a human right", they have been jerks about making sure iMessage drags it's feet using secure technologies to communicate outside of their ecosystem. Apple wants to ride a white horse on encryption, but in reality they're having an opposite, negative, effect on the vast majority of the world's population.
Doesn't matter to me, I have an iPhone. But regardless of personal experience, Google has tried and failed endlessly to make a not-shit messaging app for Android, and has now seemingly given up and adopted a terrible protocol, and is crowing about it like they're the saviour of messaging. They're not, they've just given up trying.
This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. The current version of it that people are using on Android isn't even a "standard" by any normal usage of the term, it's just another Google messaging service. No one can make their own app, and there's barely any carrier adoption, so Google is basically running the whole network.
Does this mean that now if you send a message to someone from an iPhone that doesn't go through iMessage, it will instead go through Google's servers? Sure the service will hopefully be better than SMS but at the cost of giving Google the keys to pretending they're a "standard."
After all of these years, I'm surprised that Google hasn't just made their own clone of iMessage and called it a day.
iMessage (being an SMS / chat system with a native desktop client) is the only reason I went back to iOS. As much as I miss and android community, my top priority is avoiding the physical use of my phone whenever possible.
So while this is on the right track, its still not there. Leaving encryption off the table, at least to me, doesn't make a lick of sense.
Combining Google Voice and an iMessage-like service would have been closer to the game-changer they keep marketing their chat apps as... but it looks like we're still going to wait.
A BGR article [1] is assuming that they'll use a browser extension for the desktop client, which is good for cross-platform work, but the ones I've tried in the past (PushBullet, MightyText, etc) all fell short.
Long story short, its a shame to see someone as big and powerful as Google struggle with something as seemingly simple as a good SMS / RCS client to properly compete in the space.
This must be the disconnect. As an Android user, it wouldn't occur to me that the "default" messaging app (usually something barebones and ugly) would influence how I send my messages. I just use whatever app I want, SMS or not. But unlike Android, Apple managed to popularize its own all-in-one messaging solution and in so doing brought encryption to more conversations. Google could try to do something like that with Android, but thus far they've simply remained agnostic.
Google tries again, again, and again, to create a decent messaging app, and fails every time. Whether it's bad marketing or management, it's clearly not the simplest thing in the world to achieve what apple did with iMessage (unless now you want to posit that the billionaires in Google also have no idea what they're doing ever) and the discussion is relevant especially when we are reviewing their management style.
This is a fairly ignorant article by the verge and some comments here just ran with it and made it worse.
Let me explain:
1. US carriers control a very small part of the global Android market. Google can still push for a better RCS and they will eventually have to follow.
2. Android suppprts many third party messaging apps (WhatsApp, signal, etc), some significantly better than on iOS. For example some apps have reduced functionality on iOS or lack an iPad version.
3. You can access your messages on your computer. Google supports this natively, Microsoft has great Android integration on Windows 10 and Linux has kde & g-connect. But more importantly, things like push bullet have been around for years, probably before iMessage even existed.
But I give you that Google has done a horrible job in the app department.
Yes, I don't think replacing SMS with a private company/single organisation as the messaging platform provider is the solution (which is why I also count out WhatsApp also, despite currently relying on it heavily to communicate with Android users).
I think in the end we need a cross-platform messaging protocol that replaces SMS/MMS that is not reliant on a single app vendor, provides end-to-end encryption and will be supported by mobile network providers.
I can see why Google/Android's pushing for iMessage to be an open standard (they have a page dedicated to this that looks like it's written by a war propaganda writer: https://www.android.com/get-the-message/). It would be nice, but it's also good marketing for iPhones so I fail so see why Apple will play ball unless the likes of the EU implement legislation to make it happen.
Note: I'm not sure the assumption that only the US is dependent on SMS is accurate (I think that it's a standard that works globally and is currently relied on by majority of countries AFAIK).
This is just more Google trying to grab a service from carriers and Apple.
The carriers make a lot of money on sms, and because it's table stakes for a phone, SMS remains the least common denominator in text messaging (it's like OG JavaScript, except without the good parts). Meanwhile, there are a plethora of over-the-top messaging apps that have accrued huge user bases addressing all the things RCS tries to and then some.
I think Google is moving backwards in the messaging field. I've been trying to deal with having GroupMe, SMS, Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram for years. The last thing I need is more fragmentation yet every time a Google messaging product is in the news that's exactly what they deliver.
I snarkily want to say "because Google has no idea what it's doing with messaging", but that's probably being too strong. It's a solid question to ask, that it needs to be asked I think points to the conundrum of messaging from the perspective of a consumer regarding Google products.
I'll say this much, the constant moving around of platforms and products around messaging, and the eventual announcement that Hangouts would be killing off SMS support for anyone who wasn't a Google Fi subscribe or a user of a Google Voice number is what finally pushed me to drop Android and buy an iPhone.
What you see as throwing shit at the wall, looks like testing market hypothesis to me.
Google isn't going to win the messaging space by building a kitchen sink messaging app that is compatible with everything, so they need to look for opportunities in the market that they can capitalize on.
Particularly since Google has regulators breathing down their neck, and carriers unwilling to allow an iMessage equivalent on Android.
If it's true that Google was prevented from making a good iMessage-type service by pressure from the carriers, it seems like a market failure. If Google was actually willing to build something and users wanted it, but some third party had leverage to prevent Google from doing that, it seems like the market is broken.
I don't know if this actually happened (obviously), but it really bothers me if it did. It makes me want to boycott RCS and the carriers somehow. I don't want to reward them for winning the battle to make my Android phone less useful, less encrypted, and easier to toll.
The funny part is that they might be actually emulating an entire marketplace entirely within one company, but it often seems like it's a marketplace where a large entrenched lowest common denominator is the option that everyone uses and dislikes.
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