Read receipts, typing indicators, and more.

AI Summary:

Google Messages will support texting 911 via RCS starting this winter, offering features like location sharing and read receipts. This upgrade improves emergency texting which is already supported by over half of US dispatch centers. Google collaborates with RapidSOS for enhanced responder info. This announcement precedes Apple’s expected RCS support in iOS 18, aiming to broaden RCS adoption.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Google owns Rcs. Nobody else is capable of doing what they’re doing with it, and they don’t let anyone else play.

    No third party apps, no way to choose other implementations.

    Nobody really gives a fuck about the standard itself being “open” if there’s no ability for an end user to have any choice is the matter. It’s Google or GTFO.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      There are no other implementations because no other app implemented RCS. Developers want Google to expose RCS the same way SMS and MMS are exposed but I’m not sure if they even can without sacrificing the ability to install Google Messages on a phone that didn’t come with it.

      Even then, I’m not sure if Messages even works with carrier services (like RCS should). I’ve only seen it work with Google’s servers. Even then, I don’t think AOSP should contain a messaging API tied directly to Google’s servers.

      There have been dozens of RCS clients in the past, all named things like “message+” or “Joyn”, but none of them ever got a serious user base. It took Google setting up servers and handing out free accounts for RCS to become relevant, but every RCS app seems to have already shut down or is in the process of shutting down.

      I’m not surprised there’s no choice of clients with how little consumers actually care about RCS.

      Luckily, RCS being just internet messaging allows for alternative clients in all authentication mechanisms except for SIM key authentication (that requires system privileges). I don’t know which carriers implement which authentication mechanism, but 3 out of 4 authentication mechanisms should Just Work with an RCS stack within an app.

    • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      There’s actually a second player: Samsung

      But aside from the two of them, yeah, closed. Basically the protocol the servers use to talk to each other is open, but whether they’ll want to talk to your server is undocumented and unlikely, and the protocols Google and Samsung use to talk from their servers to their respective apps are closed.