I’m not a fan of the “war” between Android and Apple when it comes to SMS/texting. The rest of the world doesn’t use SMS/RCS/iMessage as much as WhatsApp and the like, so the US is pretty much lagging behind everyone else on this anyway.
That being said, I have to admit Android did a good job with this!
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Here’s the thing - the rest of us do use SMS, we just weren’t gullible enough to fall for Apple’s bullshit about text bubble colours
That’s fuckin infantile 😂
Ok, I’m gonna get into this.
2005: Google Talk released.
2013: Google Hangouts released.
2015: Google announces Google Talk shutting down, encourages people to move to Hangouts.
2016: Despite Hangouts being a one stop shop for SMS and Chat, Google discourages people from using it for SMS, asking people to use the Google Messages app instead.
2016: Google Allo released.
2016: RCS adoption begins.
2017: Google Talk shuts down.
2017: Google Chat released.
2017: Hangouts is re-targeted for business and moves to some sort of consumer freemium model?
~2018(?): YouTube Chat released, a 1:1 messaging system inside of YouTube. No idea when it was discontinued but it didn’t last long.
2019: Google Allo discontinued.
2022: Whatever was left of Hangouts is discontinued.
2023: RCS through Google Messenger is now default instead of SMS and group messages are finally encrypted.Compare this to:
2011: iMessage released. As far as I can tell, it’s been e2e encrypted since at least 2012 and potentially since release.Google, you have no fucking leg to stand on. Get your shit together. If you had had a coherent messaging strategy, maybe Apple would have been amenable to working with you, but what incentive do they have right now? For all anyone knows, you’ll drop RCS by 2026 in favor of moving everyone to Google Heythere, the new ridiculous app for messaging!
Your comment is disingenuous.
Adding the 2018 YouTube Chat isn’t fair. Google has products that allow communicating between users. It was never meant to be any replacement for SMS, it was simply a chat system within YouTube. You know, the same YouTube that has had DM’s since day 1?
You also said in 2016 Google encourages people to use the Google Messages app. The same app being used today.
Google also launched other apps around the same time. Apps that were in development for a while. Then they shut them down, to focus all of the features/time into Google Messages.
You’re also adding very specific apps that Google never intended to make into an SMS app. Like Google Chat or Hangouts Rebrand.
Your timeline is disingenuous. Essentially from 2016 - NOW Google has been working on making Google Messages the one stop shop. Only 5 years less than Apple has been making iMessage.
War?
Oh, right, that wrist cutting thing Apple users do in that one single continent I never visited. That. Right. They do need the help.
Good for them.
What a weird dig coming from Google. Who is Google to complain about outdated messenger tech when they don’t even built RCS into Android? The RCS Google wants you to use (the one with encryption) is part of their messenger, not part of the operating system itself. It’s not even standardised.
The iMessage/SMS situation is stupid, but Google isn’t exactly doing much better here.
Give google a break, its hard for them to keep track of what message backend is in which app. They have created and killed 5 messaging apps in the time I wrote out this comment, how can you expect them to know whats going on?
Google is taking the “monkeys with typewriters” approach to messaging apps, if they release enough of them they’ll eventually stumble across a messaging app that’s compatible with iMessage.
I miss Hangouts 🥲
I miss Messenger with XMPP
I’m not using RCS until it is available with no vendor lock-in. Call me when third-party apps like Textra can use it, and I don’t need to use Google’s relay.
Google’s relay is a requirement for carriers who don’t host their own RCS infrastructure. Google set up a fallback server because outside of a few specific carriers, nobody bothered implementing RCS in their networks. In theory your carrier could set up a server and you wouldn’t need Google at all.
In theory apps could build an RCS implementation and take control of your RCS account, in the same way that apps could reverse engineer iMessage.
I trust my carrier even less than Google, which is saying something.
I guess the iPhone sales numbers in the US are keeping them awake. I personally think Apple will only bend if they are forced somehow by the US government, like the way EU did with type-C.
How about we adopt open standards
The rest of the world doesn’t use SMS/RCS/iMessage as much as WhatsApp and the like
SMSes use a standard available to any app. WhatsApp is controlled by a single company.
If you were arguing that XMPP or something like that should be used instead of SMS, okay, that’s one thing, but I have a hard time favoring a walled garden.
For real. I’d rather use shitty SMS than be locked into a meta company.
The rest of the world doesn’t use SMS/RCS/iMessage as much as WhatsApp and the like, so the US is pretty much lagging behind everyone else on this anyway.
Not sure I want to end up with Facebook controlling my messaging…
Signal. Use Signal.
Signal removed SMS integration, making adoption less likely.
When I could install Signal on my parents phones, and they could SMS and Signal message in the same app, it was great. Especially since any contacts that happened to have Signal, it just worked. My parents didn’t have to do anything.
After Signal removed SMS, my parents just open up Google Messages and message everyone from there. They don’t want to juggle two apps. They also don’t really understand it. They just go back to the “main menu”, select their friends name, and type. Signal shot themselves in the foot.
Google picked up the pieces. Now my family uses Google Messages, but now it automatically switches to RCS for any of their friends that use RCS. Exactly what Signal should’ve been.
I would like to use it but no one else does
If you’re using Google Messages anyway, it’s true that RCS is a half-notch better than SMS. Unfortunately, it doesn’t compete with any decent chat service on any front—Not signal, not Whatsapp, not Matrix, not even Telegram, and Telegram sucks ass. It’s fully centralized, Google gets all of your metadata (which is not worse than Facebook getting all of your metadata, but it is something that Apple obviously won’t agree to), there’s only one app that does it…
have they even figured out how to encrypt group chats yet?
So do people in the US chiefly send messages via SMS rather than WhatsApp and others like it? That’s so bizarre to me haha.
It is less that people use SMS and more that people just don’t use WhatsApp. I have a mix of group chats, including some with SMS and Facebook Chat. However, no one uses Whatsapp.
Yeah I use Facebook Messenger and Snapchat to keep up with friends and RCS/SMS mostly for family. Never used WhatsApp before though.
I would say that was the case in the UK generally about 5 years ago. But WhatsApp increasingly took over as the norm because it was clean, quick, relatively well encrypted, and made sending gifs and stickers easy and fun for the average user. Plus, the youth aren’t only wedded to iPhones unlike the US increasingly.
I use RCS, except for the handful of iPhone users that receive an SMS from me. The group is small, because more and more people are switching over to Android.
