After ruining Android messaging, Google says iMessage is too powerful

Google failed to compete with iMessage for years. Now it wants Apple to play nice.

Read the whole story

 

[JakJok]

iMessage lock in is such a funny concept for me
Here in Italy m even iOS users tend to not use iMessage, or at least that’s my personal experience.

unless there is a market "dominance" of iOS devices, you are likely to run into people having Android. I think it is a critical mass issue, there is no country where iOS has a dominant marketshare except the US and only in certain demographics.

Here in Argentina (one country but the same applies to the rest of south and central america) people uses whatsapp FOR EVERYTHING, even for phone calls because most carriers decided not to count whatsapp's traffic against your data caps, making it quite popular.

Whatsapp is a google property. I would question any level of meaningful encryption and worry about their core business of data mining.

In what alternate universe?

https://meincmagazine.com/information-tec ... 6-billion/

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Is this story meant to be news or opinion?

Yes.

News with a hefty dose of opinion.

 

[cfinazzo]

who wants to use email in a web browser for chat?!

I don't know what Japanese people do now but in the past they used email for text messaging.
I don't know why this isn't good - it seemed to work just fine.
I think they have had SMS for a long time but exorbitant carrier prices caused people to use email as a messaging solution.

This is only half correct: Japanese people were using proprietary messaging services offered by the telcos; they had gateways to email, complete with @ email addresses, but they came with lots of limitations compared to real email (especially in message size).

On the other hand, the messaging service had two great advantages over regular SMTP email: the messenger client was built into all featurephones sold by the telcos, and the protocol has native push notification support. It was also a great lock-in mechanism for the telcos because, while mobile number portability has been a thing for over a decade, the courtesy didn't extend to email addresses, forcing many people to stay with their carrier just to keep using their old email address.

I'm struggling to understand how the "email" side of this thing ever got any traction.

For years, my Dad (retired as of Friday, FWIW) only had an email address through his job. Sure, Bell Atlantic (Google that, kids) gave him one when we got our first modem in 1998, but their client was garbage and he never really used it.

Whether or not porting was a thing at that point is and was irrelevant - it was a bad idea from the get go.

 

[SeanJW]

I think apple should reply with a news story about google ripping out XMPP support from gChat/google talk.

i.e. Google Abandons Open Standards for Instant Messaging

They’d just reply with Apple ripping out XMPP support from the iChat client (that’s now Messages)

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Whether or not it is actually deserved, it is pretty clear that Apple is the only evil tech megacorp that anybody actually likes.

As a person who has been following tech for a while, Apples leap into the mainstream that began with the iPod and later iPhone still confuses me.

 

[phuul]

Texting should bring us together, and the solution exists. Let's fix this as one industry.

Correct, the solution exists, and it is called Signal.

Well, actually...

The solution is called Encrypted RCS. If people would actually read Lockheimer's tweet thread they would know that.

On one level, this entire problem is nonsense. I don't dispute that iMessage conveys a certain status, and those left out might feel slighted. However, instead of whining that a competitor should have to hobble their product in order to create a level playing field, raise the standards for everyone. Almost all of the additions - at least the ones people would care about - that Apple created for iMessage have RCS equivalents.

With the exception of encryption - which if it is to be a truly global solution, kind of has to be run by a third party (e.g, a carrier) and might require reworking the protocol - everything else is a solved problem.

It's taken the carriers, what, six years to implement RCS? Having a carrier implement encryption isn't a global solution, it's chaos. Also what if I want to message from, oh I don't know, a computer or tablet? Call me when I don't need a SIM/phone and the encryption has been solved. Those are the "additions" that matter. Without them RCS will never be a candidate for a "truly global solution". Until then it's just the next evolution of SMS and MMS.

By "global", I meant anyone can use it. To get that scale, and not end up in the situation where differences in platform implementations break things for people, it has to come from the networks.

The lack of multidevice & eSIM support in RCS is an oversight that can be fixed. We've waited a long time for a clear picture to emerge about what needs to be done - we'll be fine if we have to wait a bit longer.

If the most important thing about RCS is that it supplants SMS/MMS and subsumes its functionality into this new thing, which in turn improves the experience for everyone, how is that not a success?

I'm happy for RCS to replace SMS and MMS. Or, more likely, work beside them. As I've said before I would love Apple to implement it. However, my point is that RCS is JUST an evolution of SMS/MMS. It's built around having a phone number. It's built around giving phone carriers control. Sure, everyone with a phone can use RCS but it will never be something that can be used globally because of the phone number requirement. That distinction is important. How can you have multi-device messaging when you can't send a message to a computer or a tablet?

In addition the encryption portion just can't be hand waved away but leaving it to the carriers. Can anyone say with a straight face that the carriers will implement an E2EE solution that won't allow carrier lock in? Try having an encrypted conversation with a Version user when you're on T-Mobile. Hell you will probably have to use the carriers pre-installed messaging app. This is why Google implemented their own E2EE duct tape.

I'm all for a standard, I would love a standard. But as it stands RCS just can't be that standard. The only reason RCS is on the table is because Google is desperate to get out of the hole they have dug for themselves with their message app flailing.

 

[fryhole]

LMAO ... has anyone sent Google their requisite tiny violin yet ?

 

[effgee]

Texting should bring us together, and the solution exists. Let's fix this as one industry.

Correct, the solution exists, and it is called Signal.

Well, actually...

The solution is called Encrypted RCS. If people would actually read Lockheimer's tweet thread they would know that.

On one level, this entire problem is nonsense. I don't dispute that iMessage conveys a certain status, and those left out might feel slighted. However, instead of whining that a competitor should have to hobble their product in order to create a level playing field, raise the standards for everyone. Almost all of the additions - at least the ones people would care about - that Apple created for iMessage have RCS equivalents.

With the exception of encryption - which if it is to be a truly global solution, kind of has to be run by a third party (e.g, a carrier) and might require reworking the protocol - everything else is a solved problem.

It's taken the carriers, what, six years to implement RCS? Having a carrier implement encryption isn't a global solution, it's chaos. Also what if I want to message from, oh I don't know, a computer or tablet? Call me when I don't need a SIM/phone and the encryption has been solved. Those are the "additions" that matter. Without them RCS will never be a candidate for a "truly global solution". Until then it's just the next evolution of SMS and MMS.

Standards are hard. Proprietary solutions? Not so much. That's why we have infinite number of messengers and just one (outdated) messaging standard. But the standards have unique role and value compared to regular apps.

Why the ever-loving fsck are you typing yourself into a frenzy about this non-issue, anyway? When your beautiful, standards-compliant, non-Apple-tainted, Google-proprietary, mostly-RCS-compliant messages app sends my evil, proprietary, standards-hating iPhone a text message, I still receive it. And you will receive my reply just the same.

Also, my doctor’s SMS messages arrive just fine on my iPhone. Until I tell them to cut it the fuck out, that is. Because I’m an adult who can manage his appointments just fine without help.

Instead of feigning outrage that your message shows up inside a green bubble on my phone, you ought to be upset that you’ve been made a stooge who’s mindlessly regurgitating Google’s agenda, which btw is exactly the same agenda Apple’s got: $$$

 

[Chemical Tribe]

Lot of us have known Apple a long time. Tell me if this doesnt sound familiar.

They'll go with DB-9 till they can't anymore.
They'll go with ADB till they can't anymore.
They'll go with DIN-8 till they can't anymore.
They'll go with NuBus till they can't anymore.
They'll go with AAUI-15 Ethernet till they can't anymore.
They'll go with PlainTalk microphone jacks till they can't anymore.
They'll go with HDI-45 till they can't anymore.
They'll go with ADC till they can't anymore.
They'll go with Firewire till they can't anymore.
They'll go with Serial In Line Protocol till they can't anymore.
They'll go with AppleTalk till they can't anymore.
They'll go with Apple Filing Protocol till they cant anymore.
They'll go with HFS and HFS+, and..etc.. etc. till they can't anymore.

Then one day they'll announce the proprietary protocol of iMessages is being retired.
They'll also tell you that you have to buy new phones, tablets, etc to use the new globally accepted encrypted solution. And you'll do it.

No.

 

[effgee]

**frothingatthekeyboard**

Camomile tea. Try that.

 

[jtwrenn]

So....both Google and Apple suck. Got it.

 

[J.S.Bach]

100% agree with this article. I've used hangouts and another that I can't remember but it's just so frustrating when they just let it go down the toilet. Even if Google came out with the best messaging app known to mankind I wouldn't use it at this stage because I would assume that they'll blow it again.

 

[EngineerScotty]

JOKES ON THEM I WAS ONLY PRETENDING

Sure put a lot of effort into the role, champ.

Actually, my first comment surprised me that it got hidden. It contained (I thought) reasonable criticism of both Apple and Google, and I didn't think was particularly inflammatory. Both companies engage in marketplace conduct that is rude to end-users and other counter-parties, and I've never been a fan of "well, they earned their market position fair and square, so now they should be able to exploit it however they like" sorts of arguments. Apple, like many high-tech titans before them, love vendor lock-in. Google views us as the product, not as the customer, and an end-to-end encrypted messaging app would make it harder for them to sell us crap based on our chats.

(The other comment, about "both sets of stans", was just begging for it).

Sometimes, you never know.

 

[TwoKiloBalls]

imessage is only a thing in the US. Everywhere else is either SMS or whatsapp.

Well in Australia Apples market share has grown to 45.7% according to the Australian Financial Review. I don't know what point your trying to make, let me guess that Android is solely used outside the U.S. Hate to break it to you, but you're wrong.

Annecdotally my network of fam & friends is team blue bubble. Also I tried the green bubble phones and did not like them, so I switched back.

Just because they have a marketshare of 45% doesn't mean all of them are using imessage. Many will be using Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp or if they are Chinese they will use WeChat. Plus some will be work phones and they often disable imessage.

 

[SeanJW]

the only time I've seen things get weird is when an iphone sends a hi-res video via imessage. the codec ends up super grainy on google voice.

Blame MMS; the standard is very old and has only very small file limits.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

So....both Google and Apple suck. Got it.

Lol, so true.

Use what you like. Be happy.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

However, Apple is just as bad, with alternative leverage and monetization practices. When Apple saw how much they could make from iPhone repair, they downgraded the glass on their devices, and let everyone think it was Gorilla Glass or similar, and while making the glass less flexible and more shatter prone.

???

He's like the last remaining Microsoft fanboy here.

Either that or it's Cortana waking up from a coma every so often to speak to us.

 

[Neonoggie]

I have been on iPhone for 3-4 years now and have never noticed this. My contact list is about half and half, too. Cant imagine anyone giving a crap about it!

 

[beachwalker]

the only time I've seen things get weird is when an iphone sends a hi-res video via imessage. the codec ends up super grainy on google voice.

Blame MMS; the standard is very old and has only very small file limits.

agree 100%. they'll figure out a new standard. It takes time.

 

[Hateful Species]

Back in my online dating days, I did genuinely (more than once!) have women say "ew no thank you" when I texted them and a green bubble popped up on their screen. It's something that even non-tech people will notice and care about, so I'm not surprised to hear that it's causing stress for teens. I'd love to see the broader tech industry coalesce on a modern messaging standard that's device and carrier agnostic, but I'm not holding my breath, especially given Google's history.

Sounds like you dodged a bullet. If a woman is so shallow they'll reject someone because of the brand phone they have then they're not worth dating,

Try telling that to a hormonal teen. Rolling eyes, at best.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

Sucks to suck.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

imessage is only a thing in the US. Everywhere else is either SMS or whatsapp.

that's like choosing between being kicked in the crotch or being stabbed in the crotch. Surely we can do better than crotch violence.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

imessage is only a thing in the US. Everywhere else is either SMS or whatsapp.

that's like choosing between being kicked in the crotch or being stabbed in the crotch. Surely we can do better than crotch violence.

Yeah, when you look at how old sms, and, yes, rcs is, you'll wonder how we even got to even rcs 1.0 in the first place.

Whatsapp (before facebook) for what, a dollar a year that they didn't even enforce, was nice.

 

[breze]

Whether or not it is actually deserved, it is pretty clear that Apple is the only evil tech megacorp that anybody actually likes.

As a person who has been following tech for a while, Apples leap into the mainstream that began with the iPod and later iPhone still confuses me.

The iPod was a bit odd -- I had one of those Sandisk players and it seemed better in every way (easier to get files on the thing, flash rather than a spinny drive, ran for ages on a single alkaline battery). However, I definitely wanted one once it got into the iPhone form factor, because I was on a campus with wifi everywhere (too expensive for my broke student self).

I believe the reason people like Apple is that their products mostly work OK and the relationship is straightforward and less creepy than a company that primarily subsists on ads.

 

[betam4x]

7 pages of comments and I just have 1 for Google: Your project managers are incompetent. iMessage works because Apple doesn't reinvent the wheel every other month. iMessage works because it works on pretty much ANY legitimate Apple device. Maybe learn a lesson and stop trying to fix what isn't broke.

My Android friends use Signal, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger., my Apple friends use iMessage. NOBODY is using the Google stuff.

As a developer, I would not work on a messaging app for Google if they offered me a million dollars for it. Sure, I could build one, and probably even a great one at that, but I could not, in good conscience, torture users further. I wish I could fire the board and call them incompetent. Their time is coming, obviously, with almost universal dislike across nations, citizens, etc.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

JOKES ON THEM I WAS ONLY PRETENDING

Sure put a lot of effort into the role, champ.

Actually, my first comment surprised me that it got hidden. It contained (I thought) reasonable criticism of both Apple and Google, and I didn't think was particularly inflammatory. Both companies engage in marketplace conduct that is rude to end-users and other counter-parties, and I've never been a fan of "well, they earned their market position fair and square, so now they should be able to exploit it however they like" sorts of arguments. Apple, like many high-tech titans before them, love vendor lock-in. Google views us as the product, not as the customer, and an end-to-end encrypted messaging app would make it harder for them to sell us crap based on our chats.

(The other comment, about "both sets of stans", was just begging for it).

Sometimes, you never know.

I'll be the first to point out that many times whataboutism is not, in fact, a logical fallacy, and claims that it is are a rhetorical technique which allows a party to insulate itself against criticism that may well be quite warranted. You see this in politics a lot, e. g.:

Party A: Didn't you used to have a drinking problem?
Party B: Don't you drink two bottles of wine a night?
Party A: Whataboutism! You're engaging in a logical fallacy!

That being said, your initial post was downvoted for whataboutism/false equivalence, and rightly so. Your position is that Google's corporate ADHD and inability to produce a decent messaging app is somehow the same level of badness as Apple actually coming up with a reasonably good solution to the messaging problem but choosing not to implement it on their competitors platforms. That's a dumb argument.

Apple doesn't force people to use Messages. They don't even force people to use iMessage in Messages. I use Signal on my personal iPhones way more than I use Messages. You can install Whatsapp, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, all kinds of other apps. The fact that "kids these days" often use the iMessage protocol in Messages, which disadvantages Android users, isn't Apple's fault, unless it's a "fault" to make a decent product that people like to use.

 

[betam4x]

Jesus this might be Ron's most shrill one yet, and that's really saying something.

Listen, Apple's become what they railed against in that 1984 commercial and everyone, deep down, knows it. Everything's walled, everything's "proprietary", they give nothing back. It's a cult and iMessage is it's 'holy text'.

3 trillion my ass. Yeah and Tesla is more valuable than the next 5 automakers combined, and let me tell you all about what cryptos worth in US dollars. What a douche fest the tech consuming bros are becoming.

If Google keeps pushing out products that compete with other Google products every couple months, they will never catch up.

I used to defend Google beyond anything (I made a TON of money thanks to them in the early 2000s), but if you removed the search engine from the equation, Android would collapse along with their entire ecosystem (including the advertisement ecosystem).

 

[effgee]

Back in my online dating days, I did genuinely (more than once!) have women say "ew no thank you" when I texted them and a green bubble popped up on their screen. It's something that even non-tech people will notice and care about, so I'm not surprised to hear that it's causing stress for teens. I'd love to see the broader tech industry coalesce on a modern messaging standard that's device and carrier agnostic, but I'm not holding my breath, especially given Google's history.

Sounds like you dodged a bullet. If a woman is so shallow they'll reject someone because of the brand phone they have then they're not worth dating,

Try telling that to a hormonal teen. Rolling eyes, at best.

I’ve got an idea - how about this: What if these poor children had someone to help them along in life? You know, like perhaps one, maybe even two older humans who would have a vested interest in imbuing these young humans with proper values, like a sense of decency, humility, common sense and respect for their fellow humans and the world they live in. These older people could act as role models and could lead by example to help their young humans to one day leave this planet just a tiny bit better than they found it. Sure, it’s a bit far-fetched, but doesn’t that sound like something worth trying?


TL;DR: If your child makes fun of other children who have less money than they do, you are a shit parent and useless at being a human being.

 

[stormcrash]

I think apple should reply with a news story about google ripping out XMPP support from gChat/google talk.

i.e. Google Abandons Open Standards for Instant Messaging

They’d just reply with Apple ripping out XMPP support from the iChat client (that’s now Messages)

To be fair Apple ripped out XMPP after basically every mainstream chat platform that used it had died or withered into irrelevance. Yes I know you can run your own server but nobody outside of an organization of FOSS diehard is going to be doing that at this point. Who would've ever thought the AIM/MSN/Yahoo! days were the peak of bring your own message client?

 

[deltatux]

If Google truly wanted to push for interoperability, they had many chances to do so by properly implementing XMPP with OMEMO or now join the Matrix network by making Google Messages a Matrix or full on XMPP clients. Both protocols are open sourced and decentralized with modern messaging features including end to end encryption. Only reason why they're pushing RCS is because they paid millions to buy Jibe, the company that was pushing RCS at the time.

Also, this whole green bubble issue is really a US thing. Outside of the US, most people use other apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, LINE, Viber and a growing number on Signal. All these apps are available on both Android & iOS. Just weird that Apple has been able to vendor lock people so hard in the US or risk having to rely purely on SMS.

 

[stormcrash]

who wants to use email in a web browser for chat?!

I don't know what Japanese people do now but in the past they used email for text messaging.
I don't know why this isn't good - it seemed to work just fine.
I think they have had SMS for a long time but exorbitant carrier prices caused people to use email as a messaging solution.

This is only half correct: Japanese people were using proprietary messaging services offered by the telcos; they had gateways to email, complete with @ email addresses, but they came with lots of limitations compared to real email (especially in message size).

On the other hand, the messaging service had two great advantages over regular SMTP email: the messenger client was built into all featurephones sold by the telcos, and the protocol has native push notification support. It was also a great lock-in mechanism for the telcos because, while mobile number portability has been a thing for over a decade, the courtesy didn't extend to email addresses, forcing many people to stay with their carrier just to keep using their old email address.

I'm struggling to understand how the "email" side of this thing ever got any traction.

For years, my Dad (retired as of Friday, FWIW) only had an email address through his job. Sure, Bell Atlantic (Google that, kids) gave him one when we got our first modem in 1998, but their client was garbage and he never really used it.

Whether or not porting was a thing at that point is and was irrelevant - it was a bad idea from the get go.

Say goodbye to NYNEX, and hello to Bell Atlantic

 

[deltatux]

I think apple should reply with a news story about google ripping out XMPP support from gChat/google talk.

i.e. Google Abandons Open Standards for Instant Messaging

They’d just reply with Apple ripping out XMPP support from the iChat client (that’s now Messages)

To be fair Apple ripped out XMPP after basically every mainstream chat platform that used it had died or withered into irrelevance. Yes I know you can run your own server but nobody outside of an organization of FOSS diehard is going to be doing that at this point. Who would've ever thought the AIM/MSN/Yahoo! days were the peak of bring your own message client?

Cisco is huge on XMPP, it's baked into their communications products including WebEx. They market XMPP under the Cisco Jabber brand name after they bought out Jabber Inc.

 

[Mr_B]

Back in my online dating days, I did genuinely (more than once!) have women say "ew no thank you" when I texted them and a green bubble popped up on their screen. It's something that even non-tech people will notice and care about, so I'm not surprised to hear that it's causing stress for teens. I'd love to see the broader tech industry coalesce on a modern messaging standard that's device and carrier agnostic, but I'm not holding my breath, especially given Google's history.

You dodged a lot of bullets. You don't want those sleazy girls anyway.