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

 

[heartburnkid]

Apple and Google both suck on this issue, but I tend to agree with Google's stated stance. Vendor lock-in is a shitty, consumer-hostile way to do business.

 

[heartburnkid]

This article misses the mental health forest for the platform technology trees. Apple may not be "the bully", but they definitely are "the enabler".

A single update to iMessage could've stopped all of this bubble-ist/color-ist shit.

Provide one reason why Apple should enable Google.

Well, since you're clearly focused only on the money, I can't.

What does RCS provide me as a user other than major regressions over my current messaging choices? RCS is a huge boon to carriers. That's about it.

RCS is a garbage, jank protocol that only a carrier shill would love.

RCS is a huge upgrade over SMS. And this has been mentioned ad nauseum, so you can't really claim you didn't know it, but in the US, that's the messaging system that most people use, iMessage excepted.

Being an upgrade over SMS is not really that high a bar, isn't it? But what the other poster mean, is that it doesn't matter how "huge" an upgrade is over SMS, if:

1) It is still tied to carriers.
2) It doesn't offer anything more than other "rich" messaging services and it's in fact worse.

RCS fans will argue about #2 because RCS is "universal", but in reality, how is it easier and more widespread to use RCS than, say, Whatsapp? Even if you only count Pixels, let alone any other phone, RCS can be and is blocked by some carriers, and it's tied to a SIM number. I only use my Google Voice number, and can't use RCS but can use Whatsapp (which is what I do). I can even use freakin Skype easier than I can use RCS on my Pixels.

RCS is a drop in replacement for SMS. Most people in the US use SMS for messaging, so that alone makes it a more desirable option than WhatsApp.

Being tied to a SIM number is a feature in this case, not a problem.

 

[heartburnkid]

And btw, if Google were earnest in their intentions here, they'd take a lump of money, sign a binding letter of intent, and create an independent foundation that is financed by Google and could not be shuttered in a year or two when a C-level drone at Google gets bored and needs a new hobby, and have those folks design and develop a completely free and open messaging standard that contains all the functionality of iMessage and more. Then make that freely available to anyone looking to offer their customers a well-designed and secure messaging platform, and invite folks to contribute to its future development.

I mean, that standard exists. It's called RCS. It's overseen by the GSM Association and has been since 2009. And it's what Google is trying to push carriers and Apple to support.

 

[heartburnkid]

And btw, if Google were earnest in their intentions here, they'd take a lump of money, sign a binding letter of intent, and create an independent foundation that is financed by Google and could not be shuttered in a year or two when a C-level drone at Google gets bored and needs a new hobby, and have those folks design and develop a completely free and open messaging standard that contains all the functionality of iMessage and more. Then make that freely available to anyone looking to offer their customers a well-designed and secure messaging platform, and invite folks to contribute to its future development.

I mean, that standard exists. It's called RCS. It's overseen by the GSM Association and has been since 2009. And it's what Google is trying to push carriers and Apple to support.

Did you really not RTFA?

"... RCS adds typing indicators, user presence, and better image sharing to carrier messaging. It is a 14-year-old carrier standard, though, so it lacks many of the features you would want from a modern messaging service, like end-to-end encryption and support for non-phone devices. Google tries to band-aid over the aging standard with its "Google Messaging" client, but the result is a lot of clunky solutions that don't add up to a good modern messaging service ..."

Nearly every last bit of what gets Google's messaging client even remotely close to iMessage has been bolted on by Google themselves, and none of that has made it into the standard.

What Google has done here is the polar-flipping-opposite of promoting a "standard". They bolted proprietary bits onto an old, crap standard and called the resulting code-bollocks "the standard".

They lied. As usual. And also as usual, some people actually believe them, because "Google".

And now, because Google screwed the pooch, we are supposed to accept a downgrade from the messaging platform we are currently using?

Yeah no, no sale. As stated in my first comment in this thread - Google can fuck right off.

Literally all Google Messaging does is implement RCS using Google's own servers as a workaround for carriers that still haven't implemented it. That's it.

I know this might be difficult to believe, but the author that used "After ruining Android messaging" in their headline is presenting you a biased picture.