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Google says iMessage is too powerful

• WhyNotHugo 5y ago
  RCS is an excellent messaging system if you completely disregard the fact that the internet exists. It's basically the SMS v1.1, about 15 years too late. For the rest of the world, I don't think it'll ever pick up at all. SMS is long dead in the past, and, AFAIK, only still relevant in the US. Elsewhere, SMS is for verification codes and spam.
• NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Completely misses the point with their claim: "Google is just promoting carrier lock-in as a solution to Apple lock-in." That's not what RCS is.
  • justsomehnguy 5y ago
    Can you have the same identity if you change your number/carrier? Can you use it not on the smartphone? Can you use it without cellular data Eg with Wi-Fi only? Can you throw out the SIM card and still send/receive messages? If the answers is 'no' then it is a carrier lock-in.
    • webmaven 5y ago
      > Can you have the same identity if you change your number/carrier? Identity seems to be tied to a number (not carrier), but Messages uses Google Contacts as an optional layer of indirection. So, if you change your number, and the other person changes (or adds) the number to your existing contact, your identity is preserved (for them). If the other person creates a new contact for your new number (or doesn't associate the new number with any contact), identity is not preserved. > Can you use it not on the smartphone? Yes, you can use Google Messages for Web on a computer, but the authentication is still tied to the phone via a QR code, and I think that communication actually is relayed through the phone if the conversation is via SMS rather than RCS. > Can you use it without cellular data Eg with Wi-Fi only? Yes. > Can you throw out the SIM card and still send/receive messages? I think that the answer is generally 'no', but there are a few edge cases (eg. I'm not sure what happens if you auth Google Messages for Web on a computer, set it to remember the device auth indefinitely, and then remove the SIM or turn off the phone). > If the answers is 'no' then it is a carrier lock-in. As you can see, the answer isn't quite so black and white.
    • NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Whatsapp is also bound to a phone number ...? Is that carrier bound? RCS works through QR code outside, just like you can end text-messages. Why throw out a sim card? You can use RCS with ANY carrier. If you can use it with ANY carrier, it's not carrier-lock in. In Belgium, the number is personal and not from someone else. If you transfer carrier, you are allowed by law to take the number with you.
      • justsomehnguy 5y ago
        > Whatsapp is also bound to a phone number ...? Is that carrier bound? In the world with NMP - it is 'carriers' bound, but still - good luck moving to another country and preserving your number. > Why throw out a sim card? There can be any reasons.. but the most common one is someone 'liberate' you of your phone and other belongings (sometimes including documents). So now you want to talk to your family, you get a phone, login with your Google account... and now you are required the same phone number to work it back. So off you go to your telco office to restore the SIM. Oh. It is 3:00 AM and you don't have any documents/ID to prove what you are the someone you claim. And imagine if this would happen not in your backyard, but on the other side of the planet. > In Belgium, the number is personal and not from someone else MNP. But still you are tied to your /number/. Unknown number: "Hey mom! It's me, your son NicoJuicy! I was robbed tonight, can you send $100 so I could get home?" Yes, for me WhatsApp is similar with proposed RCS implementation - it is too 'carriers' bound. I hate what I need to throw my /phone/ number around to everyone to just be able to receive some text from them. I would really prefer some identificator not tied to a local provider of a completely irrelevant service. Telegram, at least, allows you to use a nickname, though it still requires '2FA' through the SMS for the registration.
        • NicoJuicy 5y ago
          Move out to another country and keeping the number is not about the carrier, which a country has multiple of. It's because of the countrycode in your number. Which indicates... The country it of from... This is literally how the routing works in the network... What an idiot example fyi. That's not even about vendor lock-in, it's about stupidity. You can restore documents at the city hall or at the embassy abroad. Ps. I'm more tied to an email. But still doesn't make it carrier lock-in. I also can't use my email when I'm not on the internet...
  • parkingrift 5y ago
    Can I use RCS to chat from my laptop signed in with an email?
    • webmaven 5y ago
      My understanding is that Google Messages for Web authentication is linked to your phone (using a QR code).
  • sbuk 5y ago
    That's exactly what RCS is about - except it's the Telcos that went to wrest control back. No thanks.
• llampx 5y ago
  I fully agree with the article. Google shot their own foot in many many things and is now slowly reaping the rewards. They had complete carte blanche to do as they wished on Android in terms of messaging, and they chose to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. RCS is a non-starter, no one outside of the US is eager to go back to an SMS-like protocol. HN opinion has been negative on Google for a while, and this is filtering into the consumer landscape. It doesn't mean they are going out of business tomorrow or at all, but I see a period of MSFT-like regression, reflection and then a Nadella to bring them out of their malaise. On the other hand, the US is unique for this because iMessage is not as popular outside the US.
  • notreallyserio 5y ago
    After reading the story about Google taking away a feature from their speakers, due to a patent dispute with Sonos, I can't help but wonder if the reason Google does such a terrible job at messaging has something to do with patents. Maybe they know they need to compete with iMessage but just can't because some patent farm or other company got there first?
    • llampx 5y ago
      Surely between one of their 8 messaging apps/teams they have the required expertise and patents? I'm not particularly keen on giving them any benefit of the doubt. They're one of the biggest, richest companies in the world.
      • vlovich123 5y ago
        Their products in this space really do just suck and Google's ability to do good consumer facing products is questionable and the ones that are good get killed off before they even have a chance to get off the ground.
        • llampx 5y ago
          Yup at this point if you buy into the new consumer products of either MSFT or GOOG, you have only yourself to blame when they inevitably get cancelled. Stick to their cash cows if you want stability. What really hurts is of course when they buy a different company and then kill its products. (Nest)
• gertrunde 5y ago
  I always considered RCS to be raising the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, not really a replacement for any of the various data-based messaging services.
• iqanq 5y ago
  I have read many comments here and in other places saying that Apple makes the green SMS bubbles annoying and hard to read. But from looking at this screenshot, I don't get that vibe at all. They don't look more annoying than the blue ones. In fact, I'd say in the top part of both screenshots, the blue ones look like they have less contrast than the green ones. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/screen-shot-2015-02-23-at-7-46-25-am.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/scree...
  • notreallyserio 5y ago
    The color isn't the problem, never was. The color simply indicates that the person is using basic SMS, and that has an effect on all members of the conversation.
    • MBCook 5y ago
      There was an article making the rounds the other day that argued that Apple had changed the green bubbles to have less contrast and thus be harder to read that they were in previous releases.
      • notreallyserio 5y ago
        Ah, I missed that. I haven't found it in my searches, just articles about accessibility settings that can be used to adjust the colors.
        • MBCook 5y ago
          Honestly I’m not sure if it made it to HN. I saw it somehow (don’t remember how I came across it) and the title was kind of generic about the blue vs green bubble thing. It was only if you actually went in and read it you saw it was making a pointer other than “shunning and network effects”.
        • enragedcacti 5y ago
          Here is what the bubbles used to look like https://imgur.com/gallery/xPib8 https://imgur.com/gallery/xPib8
• grandpoobah 5y ago
  All Google had to do was to keep improving on their original messaging software, Google Talk. Similarly, Microsoft would likely be a dominant player in the chat space today if they hadn't rebranded and renamed MSN Messenger several times and then abandoned it altogether. MSN Messenger was frickin awesome. You could draw pictures into the chat window. You could play a game of checkers while you chatted. It had a thriving ecosystem of apps and plugins. Everyone I knew used MSN Messenger... and then one day, Microsoft just said screw it, everyone can move to slow and clunky Skype... and that was the end of it. Hell, ICQ might still be around if AOL had put more development resources into it. The chat space is so bloody fragmented now, but it has nothing to do with Apple. Any one of the above mentioned companies could be killing it in this space if they hadn't pissed away what they had.
  • icedchai 5y ago
    Even AOL Instant Messenger was awesome! I used it for almost 20 years. AOL could've turned it into Slack back in the 2000's. I used to work for startups that used private AIM chat rooms for ops issues, deployments, etc.
    • pram 5y ago
      I miss it, used it since middle school. My wife and I used AIM until it shut down as our primary means of messaging even. RIP sweet prince.
  • chrisjc 5y ago
    I guess you might be able to say that ICQ is still around? And one of the largest messaging platforms around, if not the largest? Of course I'm talking about the QQ variant, which is probably so far from the original ICQ that I have no leg to stand on making the above claim. Still, a very interesting story to follow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ Acquired did a fantastic episode on Tencent (owner of QQ/WeChat) https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-10-tencent https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-10-tencent
    • 5y ago
• 1cvmask 5y ago
  I could never figure out why Android did not copy iMessage and offer the same within the Android ecosystem. The Android equivalent of the green and blue bubbles. No one is interested in a carrier driven initiative like RCS at scale.
  • alimov 5y ago
    Good question. It seems that there may be too many PM’s trying to make a name for themselves. There may also be a lack of vision, and a lack of willingness to let a product live and to make incremental changes to it… it either succeeds right away or they replace it with a similar product (rebranded) /shut it down.
• kotaKat 5y ago
  ... even though Google locked-in the entire Android ecosystem by forcing people onto Google's RCS servers because they couldn't wait for carrier implementation?
• pjmlp 5y ago
  From European point of view and our SMS infrastructure, I find really funny this kind of discussion. Besides, almost everyone uses Whatsapp, regardless of the phone brand.
  • Jyaif 5y ago
    Not just from a European POV, but also from Eastern-Asian and South-American POV. I don't know the rest of the world. For me and my peers, SMS is for 2 factor auth, spammy advertising, and the occasional parent that mistakenly sends a SMS instead of a WhatsApp message.
  • pier25 5y ago
    Nobody outside the US uses iMessage or SMS.
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      I can guarantee that plenty of people use SMS in Europe. In fact, here is a small taste only with French data, which I guess is still an European country. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1188330/sms-traffic-volume-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1188330/sms-traffic-volu...
      • mrkramer 5y ago
        SMS is legacy tech and way of communication in EU. In the near future it won't probably be used at all anymore.
        • hyperman1 5y ago
          I wouldn't count on it. SMS is available on any cellphone. If you don't know what chat apps the other side has, it's still the trustworthy if clunky baseline. For more than 10 years, SMS and a chat ap have lived side by side. The favorite chat app changed a few times, but SMS just plods along, never really gaining or losing market share.
• willis936 5y ago
  Imagine if Google had implemented the small feature set of iMessage and supported it on all OSes. Imagine how much market share they could have captured.
  • deschutes 5y ago
    What you're describing is WhatsApp. So we don't need to speculate. iMessage benefited tremendously from being the default. Combine that with Apple's mobile market share in the US and you get the present situation. My gripe isn't really that it won in the US. Its that you need Apple hardware to participate. Google may be self interested but they're right about one thing: knowingly allowing and fueling this social dynamic is inconsistent with Apple's brand. But it was never really about values, just making consumers feel good about their purchases.
    • willis936 5y ago
      I also described signal and a dozen other competitors. None of those apps are made by Google. Google ships Android. I don't think my point should have been missed.
    • nomel 5y ago
      > What you're describing is WhatsApp. Can WhatsApp do sms/mms now?
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        iMessage cannot do SMS/MMS either. Their point is Google should have stuffed their iMessage equivalent (such as Hangouts) inside of a generic texting app that also handled SMS/MMS by default, and then enabled all the same features that Apple did and released it for iOS.
        • fundad 5y ago
          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.
• parkingrift 5y ago
  The thing about iMessage is that you don’t need a separate app. You can have iMessage and SMS right next to each other. Google never seemed to understand this convenience. They released Allo without any SMS support and were hostile so suggestions that it was a gating feature to adoption. Allo predictably failed as it offered no benefits over competing services, and no SMS fallback so that it could be the single messaging app. If Google wants to level the playing field they should do it by competing and innovating. I suggest they start that endeavor by better understanding why people actually use iMessage in the first place.
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    The really sad thing is that they actually had this. Hangouts on a Google Fi phone used to let you consolidate everything to hangouts - SMS, Chats, Calls, etc. It was a pain it was limited to Fi, but it worked just fine. You could also pop open Hangouts in Gmail in your browser and there all your sms messages were, nicely grouped and tracked. Then apparently hangouts stopped being cool enough - so Google decided to shutter it in favor of "Google Messages". Technically - "Messages for web" also supports the same feature set as the integrated hangouts, but it FUCKING SUCKS. The phone/browser syncing is bad, the UI is a complete regression. Just the process of enabling it required me to actually contact support at google fi (you have to open settings, disable previous sms settings for fi, stop hangouts, update your google account, and then opt into a beta). Basically - Hangouts did exactly this, but Google continues to act like Google, and shutter any product that might actually be a good foundation to build/maintain, since Google has shown AGAIN AND AGAIN that it can't actually maintain any product. Google can innovate just fine - it's the follow through that they lack.
    • Grumbledour 5y ago
      I also had the Hangouts/sms combined app on my Google Nexus. But as you said, after annoying everyone because the sms app was suddenly gone, they annoyed everyone again because it was suddenly back. And then the annoyed everyone with several new messengers, though I am not sure who still payed attention at that time. Leaving out how annoying the death of google talk before all that was. Google has messengers on every android phone preinstalled and nobody uses them, because they create them, never significantly update them and then abandon them. It's completely their fault they don't even get a mention when people talk about messaging apps.
• jaeming 5y ago
  When I lived overseas several years ago, and was on an ancient plan that only allowed 200 free SMS messages, the blue vs green was a critical distinction. After my free SMS allotment, it indicated whether I was being charged or not.
• throwaway946513 5y ago
  Honestly, Google has spent far too long creating and throwing away messaging applications. This is almost entirely their fault for not enabling an easily cross-platform method years ago. I've made the switch to Signal, my girlfriend uses it on her iPhone to replace iMessage since I made the switch to Android last month. She can also use it on her Windows laptop unlike iMessage. My family members who are tech-y enough use Signal with me, and when they're not, I can still send standard SMS through the app. Signal even implements responses similar to iMessage 'likes' and 'hearts'. I don't think I could praise Signal enough for the great implementation they've built. Their crypto-enterprise this past year did make me feel a bit slighted, but as I don't use that feature, I can't comment on it.
  • ljm 5y ago
    It almost seems like launching a messaging app is some sort of rite of passage for a certain kind of PM or engineer at Google. I'm sure there will be more attempts to come.
  • branon 5y ago
    You can send SMS through the [Signal] app?! Been using it for a few weeks now but haven't figured this out. Or do you mean send SMS through the stock SMS app?
    • throwaway946513 5y ago
      Aye, you can send SMS messages through the Signal app itself. To do so, you have to go into your default apps, set the default messaging app to Signal (factory default is Messages for Pixel devices, likely whatever Samsung uses for Samsung devices). I just checked to see if there were any extra settings you have to enable in the Signal app, but it doesn't appear to be so. If a user uses both SMS or encrypted chat, you can long press the send button and decide between which it will use. Do note, that any previous messages sent via SMS from other apps won't show up in Signal for message history. Likewise the same if/when you switch to another SMS app.
      • 5y ago
• leoh 5y ago
  It doesn’t matter if Google ruined android messaging. The point is, tons of people use android and google is trying to make it better. The title of this article suggests an orientation towards google of contempt, as opposed to showing that google is trying to do right by its former mistakes. And does not point out that apple has not been nice in the past either. The article promotes a zero sum mentality. That only apple should win because iMessage is better and because google already messed up. As opposed to a value oriented mentality that a new standard, RCS, could be better for android and iOS users alike. Google hasn’t always been a great company. I don’t understand why we can’t celebrate wins, especially those that would benefit others, such as rcs. To do otherwise is to indefinitely call some parties good and some parties bad, to engage in black and white thinking. Which is more harmful for ourselves and says more about ourselves than the individuals and corporations of the world.
  • alimov 5y ago
    “..google is trying to do right by its former mistakes” - this entire thread is a joke. I mean come on… they don’t even let their products have a chance to breathe before shutting them down just so they can release the same product with tweaked branding and a different UI.
  • dagmx 5y ago
    I don't think the article is promoting a zero sum game. It's rightfully calling out Google for calling out Apple when both companies are to blame for this.
    • gnabgib 5y ago
      What was posted by the official Android account ("Message should not benefit from bullying. Texting should bring us together, and the solution exists. Let’s fix this as one industry."), and the opinion of the article's author ("Google took to Twitter this weekend to complain that iMessage is just too darn influential with today's kids") bare no relation. The author clearly doesn't like RCS, which is an opinion he's entitled to.. but Google's approach to try and get multiple vendors to adopt an open standard (RCS), instead of creating a walled garden seems like the better path.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  Larry Page wanted to buy WhatsApp so Google can compete in IM app business but WhatsApp sold to Facebook. I think Google had Gmail chat called Gchat, that thing could've been successful idk how it failed tbh.
  • Mindwipe 5y ago
    Google infighting plus a bit of a complete failure to push back against American carriers.
    • mrkramer 5y ago
      Yea but it doesn't make sense since they were already partnered with carriers who were offering Android phones to their customers.
• qalmakka 5y ago
  I'm so glad this is chiefly an American problem, as I wrote previously in another post about iMessage. Outside the USA and maybe some CANZUK countries, SMS are dead, iMessage is irrelevant and chat apps such as WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram, Viber, KakaoTalk and LINE dominate the market - I live in Italy and I haven't received a single SMS from an actual human being in several years. In those countries where Apple didn't have a > 50% market share in the early '10s, people simply couldn't use iMessage. For instance, this is a summary of how things went in Italy. I think something along these line could have happened in most other countries where prepaid traffic was the norm though: 1. In Italy, basically the entirety of mobile plans were and still are prepaid, which meant you charged your account with money which you then used to pay for your traffic. Most people also had plans you could easily change, which gave you stuff such as SMS and phone calls minutes for a fixed fee, and you paid for them using prepaid credit. More "serious" contracts were heavily taxed, and thus only make sense for corporate phones or if you have a VAT account to deduct some of the taxes (and even them they were not the cheapest option). 2. No prepaid plan included unlimited SMS until around 2015, when they had already become largely irrelevant to most people. Before then, you generally got a very limited amount of SMS per month or day, and those were often tied to numbers belonging to the same carrier. This meant that most people in a certain area were basically forced to stick with a certain MVO for most of the '00s. For instance, a very popular 2007 Vodafone prepaid plan in Italy costed €6 per month, and included 100 SMS a day towards all Vodafone numbers (99 actually, you had to pay the first one). Having the "wrong" carrier in that time period meant that people had to pay a lot of extra credit to have a proper conversation with you - this was often a deal breaker for romantic relationships among teenagers, or led to people not contacting you at all. A very interesting time indeed. 3. MMS were basically never included in any plan ever, and when they did, they had the same limitations as SMS. Often, if your plan followed the "pay the first message, get 99 free" clause this was also true for MMS, meaning you had to pay for the first SMS AND the first MMS. If People were so wary of them that they actually deleted the MMS APN from their phones to avoid sending one of them by mistake - if you wanted to send a photo to someone you simply waited until you got home, in order to use MSN Messenger or email. The only usage of MMS I remember of in the '00s was sexting. 3. When iPhones and Android came out in the late '00s, data packs suddenly became a necessity to most early adopters. The iPhone heavily pushed its Internet capabilities a lot, and you often had just spent a hefty sum (remember: prepaid meant you had to pay the whole phone cost upfront) so you wanted to squeeze value out of it. Carriers at the time came out with the idea of selling extra prepaid packs with a limited amount of data (i.e. 50 MB a day, or 500 MB a month), which was not an awful lot but it was enough for maps and some light browsing. 4. I actually bought an iPhone 3G back in 2008, and it was truly amazing for its time. I paid around €550 for it, which was quite a lot for a teenager - I had to sink a lot of the money I had earned from my summer job in order to buy that. Most people around me were very against the idea of spending so much money on a phone - after all they could get by by simply buying a random Nokia 6610i or whatever for €100 and pay your 10 euros a month in prepaid credit and do whatever you needed to do. The fact that carriers in countries like the USA basically forced you into 2 year plans meant that you often got iPhones for cheap, which helped get a foothold in the market. 5. When people started to actually switch to smartphones around ~2011, most people picked up shitty €200 Android phones which utterly sucked, and the higher end saw a lot of fierce competition between the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and the likes. Still, you could expect at most 1/5 of your contacts to have an iPhone, and still people were locked in those carrier walled gardens when sending SMS. If they had an iPhone you could send them iMessages, but that was not the case. The fact iMessage was integrated in the SMS app didn't help either: people back then had to actually _count_ how many SMS they had sent a day to stay under their daily caps, and mixing in special messages you didn't have to pay was actually pretty confusing. I think most people in Italy today still don't really know what iMessage is actually. 6. Data is carrier agnostic - as soon as true chat apps with push notifications such as WhatsApp and FB Messenger came out, people started using them as a loophole to avoid paying for MMS and SMS. Group chats, which were really not feasible before (remember: SMS caps), suddenly became popular. Feeling left out, most people left feature phones in order to use chat apps, causing SMS to quickly disappear in less than a year. As an example, I went from sending 100 SMS a day in 2012 to 20 a YEAR in 2013.
• lern_too_spel 5y ago
  Before Google complains about Apple holding back interoperable rich texting with RCS, Google should make RCS work with Google Voice. The people in charge of product at Google remain utterly incompetent. Get your house in order.
  • Closi 5y ago
    Yep, and before Google complain that Apple doesn't allow iMessage on Android, maybe they should make sure their closest product (Messages by Google) is available on iOS?
    • nyuszika7h 5y ago
      How do you expect that to work? Apple doesn't allow third-party SMS apps, and as far as I understand RCS is also pretty closely tied in with carriers so it probably wouldn't work without official support from Apple either.
      • Closi 5y ago
        To be honest I didn't realise it was based around RCS (or really what RCS was!) I thought Google had their own thing, but I think I was getting confused between Messages by Google and Hangouts (or one of their other apps). Can you do a hangouts chat within messages by google? (The whole Android messaging ecosystem is so confusing to me!)
        • ianburrell 5y ago
          Messages on Android is just SMS and RCS. Hangouts is dead, replaced by Google Chat. On Google Fi, Messages can sync messages with web app. I wish there was a Messages for iOS for reading Google Fi messages on my iPad. But that would be a pretty niche use and they would have to call it something less confusing. Hangouts used to have the ability to do both Hangouts and SMS. But it didn't have the ability to automatically switch like iMessage. They could have also rolled out the ability to sync SMS to more carriers instead of just Sprint and Google Fi.
• Nelkins 5y ago
  Semi-related: Does anybody know of a way to export iMessages from your iPhone?
  • nyuszika7h 5y ago
    You can extract them from an iTunes backup using iMazing or Reincubate Backup Extractor, though both are paid.
  • meepmorp 5y ago
    They're stored in a sqlite database on your phone. If you make an unencrypted backup of your device, you can find the db file in the output. The filenames are all mangled, but there's a manifest database at the root of the dump that has a mapping to the source file metadata. From there, you just need to export the data you want from the messages db. The schema is kind of amazing, but not in a good way. You don't need to buy a tool - you can write a python/ruby/whatever script.
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  Whatsapp works for us.
• lgats 5y ago
  A very brief history of every Google messaging app https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo-hangouts-talk-messaging-mess-timeline https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo...
  • Animats 5y ago
    List of discontinued Google products.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...
  • onion2k 5y ago
    That article misses Google Currents (https://currents.google.com/ https://currents.google.com/), which is what Google+ became.
• dmak 5y ago
  More RCS opinions on author's Twitter: https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1480679515298934786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1480679515298934786?ref...
  • jcranberry 5y ago
    So RCS is bad because it's messaging based on phone number rather than email address? Why isn't SMS bad?
    • kergonath 5y ago
      SMS would be terrible as a new solution now. It is still useable because it works in any situation where you get a 2G signal, but it is mostly used as a fallback. And around here SMSes are free and unlimited in €2/month plans (data is the new cash cow).
    • acdha 5y ago
      See his next tweet: https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1480679860381138947 https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1480679860381138947 I think he's right: the big problem I have with SMS is that it's run by the carriers, who are terrible at non-phone infrastructure — that's how you get SMS delivery latency ranging from seconds to days, completely opaque to the user, and new features are a long, slow grind. RCS preserves that model going forward.
      • jcranberry 5y ago
        Ah I see that makes sense. Somehow I didn't see that in the thread. So this person just wants to move away from phone number based messaging entirely. I will say SMS Is still useful when you don't have an internet connection. TBH I feel like most people are moving away from SMS already. I suppose google could just go the route of Apple and bake in google messaging or something into the OS.
        • acdha 5y ago
          What I’d like would be doing something like the way notifications work or what Apple did for video streaming with the TV app: make messages pluggable so I could have a single app listing all of my conversations like I had with Adium a decade ago. I might still open those apps for extra features when I need them but it’d be nice to just see my last message from someone without having to remember that e.g. we normally use Signal but sometimes use SMS or WhatsApp in groups.
• olliej 5y ago
  Google did this to themselves, and now are crying that the law should protect them, despite them having larger market share than iOS. RCS would be a regression for people who /do/ use iMessage, as RCS can randomly drop encryption, does not support multiple devices per account, and does not support group messaging. In addition to that, RCS's feature set is defined by carrier groups, who like to charge extra for "value add"/new features, and who don't move at the speed of tech release schedules.
  • lern_too_spel 5y ago
    But it would be a step up for people who use SMS on iPhone, which is everybody who texts a non-iPhone user, which is everybody. It would also be a step up for every Android user who texts an iPhone user that doesn't support rich texting. Apple is wrong not to support an interoperable rich text protocol, and Google is also wrong not to support it in Google Voice.
    • olliej 5y ago
      It would still need green bubble treatment as the security guarantees are weaker than iMessage or any of the myriad google chat systems. At its base level it is meant to be e2e encrypted but that fails frequently enough that google has to have special UI to indicate the failure, even though they endeavor to minimize how visible that indication is. For group chats (the ones that seem to pop up in examples) RCS does nothing: it isn’t e2e. Group e2e is challenging, which is why it’s still rare even though it has been the behaviour of messages’ group chats since day 1. That said it is mind blowing to me that the carriers specified RCS’s group protocols as anything other than fully e2e. If you’re going to make it a standard you don’t get to half ass it. :-/ Then as others have said, in RCS your keys and account are tied to your phone number. This is not as much of a problem in the US, but in many countries changing carrier means changing number.
      • lern_too_spel 5y ago
        The security guarantees for RCS E2EE are higher than the security guarantees for iMessage. iMessage relies on a public key server controlled by Apple (or China if you're messaging someone in China). Whoever controls that server can MITM the protocol, and the client has no way to verify. iMessage also doesn't have forward secrecy. RCS E2EE, on the other hand, is a straightforward implementation of the Signal protocol, which does implement forward secrecy and which provides a way for the user to verify they aren't being eavesdropped.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  iMessage is built in to every iPhone so that’s 70% there, and has a free vs paid indicator(blue/green), Us vs Them, private vs not private.
  • meepmorp 5y ago
    > and has a free vs paid indicator(blue/green), Us vs Them, private vs not private. Or, in less loaded and hyperbolic terms, a visual indicator of the medium used for the conversation.
  • fundad 5y ago
    Us (iMessage) vs Them (Those without iOS or macOS) vs Those without smartphones (Mail) vs Those without internet (Phone) vs Those without phone or internet (Maps)
• m0ngr31 5y ago
  Back in the original Palm Pre days, webOS had the best messenger app. Would do regular SMS messages but you could configure your AOL, MSN, and even Facebook messaging at one point IIRC all inside of the same interface. It's too bad it lost out compared to Android. Was so far ahead in so many areas.
  • tw04 5y ago
    Right, it had a jabber/XMPP client for that brief window when everyone was pretending to try to standardize. Google, AOL, MSN, Facebook, they were all (mostly) interoperable. Now we're back to all walled gardens.
    • m0ngr31 5y ago
      What a sad place we've arrived compared to where we started
  • garrickvanburen 5y ago
    That feeling when iPhone finally gets a feature I had on my TouchPad.
  • etchalon 5y ago
    webOS was just the best.
• skarz 5y ago
  While I’m not a proponent of Apple’s walled garden approach, I think this stuff about bullying over the blue indicator is just Google using something to shame Apple so that Google can get what they want. Even if Apple introduced RCS to their phones to give better compatibility to Android features, the blue indicator would still show that the message was sent with end-to-end encryption which is something RCS doesn’t do according to this article. In my mind, a better solution for Apple would be to release an iMessage app on the Play Store or to work with Google on building a better messaging service that includes those features. But Apple probably won’t do that because it’s actually better for sales if they do have features that allow their users to feel superior to others, as cynical as that sounds.
  • thesausageking 5y ago
    I'd have more sympathy for Google if they hadn't spent the last 20 years creating and killing messaging apps: Google Talk, Plus, Buzz, Wave, Hangouts, Allo, ... And, instead of fixing it, the VP in charge is blaming 12 year old "bullies". iMessage is really good because Apple focused on making a great product.
    • xanaxagoras 5y ago
      Of note is Google never took the plunge on any of these the way Apple did. Which one of those products failed back to SMS messenger for compatibility and provided a default rich communication option like iMessage? They've never tried anything like iMessage, no idea why. It would be a different story if they were goading Apple in public to interoperate with their version of iMessage, beloved and used by all Android users. But this position they're taking here just looks kind of lame.
    • nostromo 5y ago
      Blaming bullies is the new "get out of jail free" card. Google just deployed the same logic to remove dislike counts on YouTube, despite those being valuable for users.
  • fundad 5y ago
    It's fitting that Google seized on this article that completely ignores that some kids don't have a smartphone at all, the article's author didn't even ask the interviewees about kids without phones being ostracized . This was probably placed by Google's PR dept. Kids without phones may even, gasp, be bullied over it. Wouldn't that mean that Google, Apple and all handset vendors benefit from fear of bullying over not having a phone at all?
• khana 5y ago
• not2b 5y ago
  Both companies are in the wrong: Google for its half-assed and broken messaging solutions and its current claims that RCS will suffice, and Apple for promoting lock-in by only supporting iMessage and SMS and nothing else and being quite clear that they consider this a competitive advantage. There needs to be an interoperable, highly functional solution that doesn't depend on wireless carriers.
  • SquirrelOnFire 5y ago
    Like Signal?
    • XorNot 5y ago
      I mean yes, but Signal needs to grow up and decide if it's going to find a way to play ball with business, or stick to it's ideological purity and weird cryptocurrency experiments (I use Signal solely for all my messaging now).
      • flubflub 5y ago
        What do you mean by play ball with business?
        • judge2020 5y ago
          Supposedly Signal received ~$600k in donations in 2018 while spending ~4M in infrastructure costs[0], so OP is suggestion they do regular revenue generation via in-app features and whatnot instead of cryptocurrency stuff. 0: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/signal-statistics/#:~:text=Messaging-,Signal%20Revenue,-Signal%20does%20not https://www.businessofapps.com/data/signal-statistics/#:~:te...
    • fsflover 5y ago
      Like Matrix. Signal can't even be installed without Apple or Google.
      • 5y ago
• xmly 5y ago
  iMessage for Android, please!
  • deadmutex 5y ago
    FYI: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-android-ecosystem-lock-in-epic-games-filings-app-store-dispute https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
• xnx 5y ago
  The state of chat shows just how much of a miracle the federated interoperability of email is.
  • awelxtr 5y ago
    I guess that business were never built upon chats, while email (and conventional mail) is really the backbone of the enterprise world
• blunte 5y ago
  With all the lock-in and connectedness of Google owned systems, they cannot complain. And it's not Apple's fault that Google can't build long term successes in most products it creates. That's a management/strategy problem. How many messaging systems has Google had over the years? Their shotgun approach works financially, but it means that only a few of their projects really stick (win). The rest just trundle along until they get discontinued. The hypocricy is tiresome. When there's a regulation that threatens them, they make a lot of noise about "free market", and "let the market decide". But when the market decides against them, they want some government intervention.
  • mizzao 5y ago
    What is it about Google's culture that creates this shotgun approach of halfhearted abandoned products? I have my own theories but I'd love to hear others.
    • blunte 5y ago
      Their culture used to promote 10 or 20% time side projects, many of which became full Google projects. That will certainly lead to some abortions. However, at some point there are executives deciding strategy, and almost by definition they are out of touch. From my observation, the most reliable strategy is to let a start-up with passion build something great that people want, and then buy that start-up. This is what companies older than Google have been doing for decades. (Google does it too, but they were more in-house-first in the past.)
  • dafoex 5y ago
    I was thinking the same thing. I've seen Google Voice (audio), Hangouts (text, audio, and video), Allo (text), Duo (video), Meet (video), Chat (text), and Messages (text) all in quick succession. Which one of these do I pick to compete with iMessage, Google?
  • jjacob03 5y ago
    And Apple should say Google search is too powerful.
• whoomp12342 5y ago
  in other news, pot calls kettle black
• kelnos 5y ago
  > so it lacks many of the features you would want from a modern messaging service, like end-to-end encryption This bit annoyed me; while the base RCS spec does not include E2E encryption, Google implements it as an extension. Now, I don't know how their implementation works (is it the Signal protocol? is it some homegrown thing? haven't looked into this), and it absolutely should be in the base RCS spec as something that's required to implement, but saying it lacks E2E encryption is not quite correct.
  • codyogden 5y ago
    Yes. When RCS is enabled for both parties and they are both using Messages, it uses the Signal Protocol for all one-to-one chats. It does not work for group chats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Google) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Google)
    • kelnos 5y ago
      Good to know, thank you for the reference! Disappointed to learn that E2EE only works for 1:1 conversations, not group chats. I wonder why they chose to limit it in that way.
      • jvolkman 5y ago
        Group chats are coming. https://twitter.com/lockheimer/status/1480663656463437824 https://twitter.com/lockheimer/status/1480663656463437824
• flubflub 5y ago
  I only use Signal over SMS because Signal is encrypted and has groupchats. Those are the only features I would need in an SMS replacement.
• smm11 5y ago
  Google is just complaining that they're too dumb to make something, improve on it, and keep it around. The only bad part here is that YouTube's days are numbered. The other stuff doesn't matter. I suspect that worldwide iMessage and whatever Google is pushing on a given day is a rounding error.
  • GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Google isn’t dumb. They are an advertising company that creates hype with other experimental products (to increase stock prices) they fully intend to dismantle, and buys out functional tech companies. They are using hype to increase their stock and axe them later to show a better earnings report further increasing stock prices. They are intelligent and runs on innovative hype but at their heart they’re an advertising company.
  • partiallypro 5y ago
    How are YouTube's day numbered? I see no competitor in the space at all.
    • dublinben 5y ago
      By some measures, they've already been overtaken by TikTok.[0] That's what a YouTube competitor looks like. [0]https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/7/22660516/tiktok-average-watch-time-youtube-us-android-app-annie https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/7/22660516/tiktok-average-wa...
      • partiallypro 5y ago
        Tiktok is not a competitor to YouTube. Long form vs short form. It's like comparing tweetes to long form articles. I've actually seen Tiktoks promote YouTube videos.
      • johnsolo1701 5y ago
        This is like suggesting cars' days are numbered because skateboards have become extremely popular. Sure they technically are competitors in some extremely narrow ways, but suggesting so belies a misunderstanding of the underlying uses of each.
• thevagrant 5y ago
  Google don't let Google Apps accounts convert/migrate to Gmail or migrate purchases between Google accounts when I last checked. It makes it very difficult to exit the Google system when I tried to migrate to Fastmail. I don't really trust Google to manage messaging long term. Their messaging products have changed so often, I gave up trying to use them.
• partiallypro 5y ago
  My problem with Apple's approach is they have essentially hijacked the SMS protocol and put a layer on top of it. Then they actively push against anything that would endanger that, including moving on to better standard protocols because it would eliminate some of the "prestige" or "status" that now comes with the bubble colors, reactions, etc. In the end that hurts not just Android users, but also Apple users. I'm honestly surprised more people don't complain about it...and given Google is really the only other big phone software maker now, it is their role to try to say something imo. "You reap what you sow" (as this article says) honestly sounds ignorant (or just pro-Apple) and really ignores the major problem here. Google has been bad at messaging apps, that doesn't mean this concern isn't real or a fairly big problem. Especially when the stats show that this is creating a hardware monopoly for Apple (look at the stats for young people,) in 10-15 years this creates a much bigger hardware market share for Apple. That is not a desirable outcome.
  • iamtheworstdev 5y ago
    what's the better standard? RCS is trash. Google is literally pulling a "think of the children" campaign when the children don't even care what anyone is using because they're all on snapchat, whatsapp, and everything else.
    • partiallypro 5y ago
      > Google is literally pulling a "think of the children" campaign when the children don't even care what anyone is using because they're all on snapchat, whatsapp, and everything else. Except stats don't back up what you are saying, at least not in the US. RCS is no less trash than SMS, it's actually an improvement over SMS. They could come together, along with carriers, to create an even better standard but one party is holding out...and blocking any innovation (hint, it's Apple.) I don't get how people are ok with them hijacking an open standard.
      • threeseed 5y ago
        Actually the issue is with carriers. They don't want features like end to end encryption because it relegates them to being a dumb pipe and limits their ability to innovate e.g. parsing SMS messages for advertising purposes. Also many carriers are closely tied to governments who want to be able to monitor communication. I've worked for a number of telcos over the years and can assure you that they don't have the interest of users at heart.
• onion2k 5y ago
  Surely at least one of Google's 87 different chat platforms can compete.
• everdrive 5y ago
  I don’t really understand why people keep referring to the text bubble color here. "Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones." Why is text color an issue? Or, is it just a stand in for referring to the different apps?
  • sylens 5y ago
    It’s more about the what the color of the bubble symbolizes. When you see a green bubble, you know you are losing features when communicating with this person - the nice link previews, the reactions to individual messages, threading, mentions, and various other iMessage tie-ins that people have. In a one-on-one conversation, it’s not the biggest deal…but in a group text it is a massive loss of functionality, enough to make people set up separate group texts with only iPhone users to restore the lost functionality when they don’t need to message the non-iPhone users.
    • alimov 5y ago
      FYI you don’t lose reactions to messages.
• syspec 5y ago
  > the company [Google] has released 13 half-hearted messaging products since iMessage launched in 2011.
• Sunspark 5y ago
  Jony Ive fancies himself a wizard of design. Well, he dropped the ball when he decided to go with white text on a light green background. This is called low-contrast visibility and reduces accessibility for those with visual impairments. Jony and Apple could have left a switch setting for black letters instead, but no, the Apple way is read white letters on a mid-tone gradient. My last iPhone, I never upgraded it from iOS 6 because I didn't agree with this design direction, and I have to say it's a breath of fresh air using Android because you don't have to deal with a single guy making all the decisions for you.
  • snazz 5y ago
    Settings>Accessibility>Display & Text Size>Increase Contrast takes care of that across all Apple apps and most third-party ones.
• bogidon 5y ago
  I still have an iPhone for now (am waiting for mobile Linux to become just a little more mature) but I’ve turned off iMessage. When I get asked about how I can be reached by IM I tell people they can find me on Signal. Been doing this for about two years and now ~80% of my personal conversations are over Signal. And most of these friends are not very technical. I love my little successful rebellion against the walled garden. And it will make my eventual transition away from iOS much easier. Just a somewhat related personal anecdote, sorry to deviate a bit from topic. EDIT: Yes, Signal is centralized and I would have loved to use Matrix. But the clients are bad. Email me if you want to build a better one
• julienb_sea 5y ago
  iMessage is indeed way too powerful, but RCS is nowhere near as good. Even basic things like fast high quality photo/video sharing, reactions, and apps like in-chat games. I suspect Apple will eventually support RCS as a strong improvement over SMS. This will help a lot with bridging the gap, but Apple will still use iMessage as a differentiator.
• dgudkov 5y ago
  Heh, now Google feels the pain of proprietary protocols. Had Google pushed for XMPP and RSS odds are they wouldn't lose so miserably to Apple and Facebook on the social side.
  • alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    Lol
• TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > Google once had a functional competitor to iMessage called Google Hangouts. Circa 2015, Hangouts was a messaging powerhouse Is it still a powerhouse if no one uses it?
  • codyogden 5y ago
    They killed Hangouts, but they first specifically killed SMS integration.
• michael1999 5y ago
  This was a great line, and sums up Google's chat history: "If the company really wants to do something about iMessage, it should try competing with it."
• sylens 5y ago
  People forget that Google had a perfectly good messaging service called Google Talk that lived inside Gmail (the biggest product besides the iPhone at that point), interoperated with XMPP and AIM back in 2007, and threw it all away in 2011 as part of their mad dash to make a Facebook competitor in Google+. With Google+, we got Hangouts, which later became a standalone product in 2013 so that they could sunset Google Talk. If they had just kept iterating on Google Talk and made it similar in functionality to iMessage, they would be in such better shape today. Instead, they’ve thrown away the last ten years on messaging.
  • thund 5y ago
    and they were quite quick to drop federated XMPP, because.
• vmception 5y ago
  All Apple has to do is wait this out as the social ostracizing is just a convenient side effect of their scarlet lettering. The color coding was made to inform users that SMS fallback was being used if green, which went on to mean "unencrypted". Monopolies are tolerated if no anti-competitive practices are employed, here, the competitor shot itself in the foot 13 times and asked Apple "why did you do this".
• dlsa 5y ago
  Google really needs to get its nearest competitor under control before they go after others. But Google can't get itself under control. Too busy shooting its own products before they can run, walk or even crawl. Bikeshedding at scale. This is what it looks like. I'm surprised that their home automation systems don't have some incompatible chat platform embedded in them.
• dopa42365 5y ago
  The American is hitting themselves in confusion! These threads are hilarious for anyone that's not part of the chosen 3% (or whatever) of the worlds population.
• sungam 5y ago
  It's interesting how country specific this is - in the UK most people use WhatsApp so this is not an issue (although that does create its own issues)
  • etchalon 5y ago
    I'm sorry, but what you're saying is impossible. The HN comment section has made it clear that Apple has a monopoly on messaging, and no one can compete with them.
• izacus 5y ago
  It's bizarre how many people here say "oh, walled garden lockin of communications is fine because the alternative is Facebooks app people use outside the US!"
  • alimov 5y ago
    If people can disable iMessages, and also use other messaging apps, what is the issue here? If people don’t want to be in the “walled garden” are they not allowed to switch from iPhone to Android? Certainly someone willing to dish out the cost of an iPhone can afford an alternative device if they wanted one.
• st00 5y ago
  I remember when the ethos at Google was to compete on technical excellence. Yes, those days are long gone. Yes, technical excellence isn't enough to "win" the IM market (assuming that winning is possible or even desirable). However, it never stops hurting to see the change in tone. For a company that is reticent about so many important problems, this seems like poor form.
• qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
  I will listen to Google's plea when it stops siphoning web browsing behavior from Chrome, tying Android phones to Google accounts and banning genuine scientific debates on Youtube.
• filmgirlcw 5y ago
  Google shouldn't have done its part to kill XMPP if they really cared about lock-in. iMessage is incredibly popular with certain demographics in the United States -- it's an in-group signifier the way teens have always had in-group signifiers (when I was in high school, it was AIM, a Nokia, and wearing Abercrombie) and that isn't about bullying. If Google had its way, its products would be used as the ways to "bully" the out-group. So this is much ado about nothing. It is notable that iMessage has persisted with its popularity in the US for as long as it has. And it is true that iMessage is definitely an ecosystem carrot, again, in the US. But in countries that didn't adopt SMS/MMS the same way we did in the US (b/c of cost/international variance/etc), the in-group messaging app is something else. It's always fascinating for me to go to other countries and see a ton of iPhone users not using iMessage but something else because that app has become the in-group signifier. And every teen I know uses Discord more than they use almost anything else. The ranking typically goes Discord, IG, iMessage. Having said all of that -- even if you took away iMessage, the iPhone would still be a status symbol/in-group signifier for a lot of people, especially young adults in the US. Samsung has had the best track record with some of its devices with approaching similar brand loyalty/"it" factor, but even if Apple adopted RCS -- it's not like the phone all the influencers and cool teens would be using would be Pixels. It would still be the iPhone for a host of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with technology. White earbuds have been a fashion marker for 20 years now and that's what this comes down to. It isn't about lock-in or regulation or technology. It's about fashion.
  • Cub3 5y ago
    > Google shouldn't have done its part to kill XMPP if they really cared about lock-in Exactly this, Google was happy to be against open communication platforms when it felt it was in their interest but as soon as it goes the other way "Oh we should all be using RCS" Reap what you sow
• socceroos 5y ago
  Tell them to tip a few tens of millions into funding Matrix. Go back to the good old days and give it another chance.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  > "Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones." This can't be true, because if it is there is bigger problem than some google's protocol. Why are they still torturing kids with these parades? Get some celebrities to make the green texts cool, this is madness.
• aspenmayer 5y ago
  RCS is garbage. Here’s why: There is a publicly-facing Google site to enter an RCS enabled cellphone number, in order to disable Chat features… including end-to-end encryption.[0] This feature should only be configurable on-device, ideally, or at least be behind a login and 2fa. It’s just there on a public site. This is basically asking for sim-swapping attacks. And you’d never notice, only wonder why your RCS e2e keeps turning itself off. I wonder which individuals and agencies may benefit from that… Even with the Chat features enabled, RCS doesn’t not support e2e on group texts[1], unlike iMessage, which does[2]. Google is just playing dirty pool and calling Apple users bullies by proxy, and I’m calling them on it. Edit: Apple has a similar site to disable iMessage. This setting should only be available on-device, or if it has to have an online workaround, behind a login with 2fa. If you no longer have access to your phone, you should have to contact Apple support or go to an Apple store. The status quo benefits bad actors and intelligence agencies more than it improves the experience for end users IMO. [0] https://messages.google.com/disable-chat https://messages.google.com/disable-chat [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724 [2] https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en
• rsynnott 5y ago
  I mean, well, yes, obviously, but those who live in glass houses possibly shouldn't throw stones, Google.
• xgme 5y ago
  Google is really becoming the old Microsoft. In old Microsoft it was believed that competing teams for the same product would lead evolution for the best product. Google is now doing that. Hangouts was cool much before iMessage and Zoom as mentioned in the article. I remember it being my main messaging platform. I remember being amazed with the video chat quality with multiple people. Google was at least 5-6 years ahead of the game. But then, it just fell more and more behind. As far as Google products go, nothing is user-centric and everything gets clunkier. Only Google product that feels staying alive is Google maps and maybe Google search. Not that Bing is better but there are times, I Bing a search to find something I can't find in Google search. I feel like even Gmail is falling behind now; it stayed the same billion years. Simple filtering, organizing tools stayed the same.
  • mizzao 5y ago
    Nope, search is toast too https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/19/google-search-results-monopoly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/19/google-... https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1477701120319361026 https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1477701120319361026 (posted on HN) Hilariously, I had to use bing and HN's algolia search to find these
• fortylove 5y ago
  LOL Google is pontificating on a messenger app, of all things? Google, I'm not sure you're qualified to have an opinion on this topic, given your historical failures in this space :)
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    Google is just jealous they’re not able to read the messages and show ads, Remember Google Allo the shameless app that reads every message and “suggests” businesses automatically?
• WheatM 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• bluSCALE4 5y ago
  Guess that guy who posted a link to an article about PR teams writing articles wasn't BS.
• backtoyoujim 5y ago
  Google Wave.
• throw7 5y ago
  Google needs to stop complaining and make RCS web accessible like hangouts was. messages.google.com is not it. that requires your cell phone to be on to pass through the texts.
• bhewes 5y ago
  I use a Pixel 6 and Ipad Pro (11) daily. It would be nice if they got along more.
• fareesh 5y ago
  iMessage seems like the WeChat of America. It has a ton of integrations but if you exist in any other part of the world, it really doesn't make any sense to use it, since maybe 1 out of 5 people will be reachable. SMS is like a spam graveyard where 2FA codes and other regulatory compliance related stuff shows up. SMS is primarily texts from my bank and spammers. Most folks in the rest of the world are using WhatsApp, with the occasional country where Telegram is more popualr. Messaging with a layer of rich features for billions seems like a hard problem. I'm not sure what iMessage is built on, but WhatsApp is using customized erlang/ejabberd and Telegram is its own golang MTProto stack. Each probably handle millions of connections on FreeBSD or something I suspect.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• champagnois 5y ago
  Google made a pixel phone. I liked it. Unlimited photo storage for life they said. Google hangouts and duo they said. Google this and that they said. Seems they rug pulled on every one of those programs. Now, what is the selling point of a Pixel phone? They are designed to spy on and abuse their users by default. The entire business model is built around collecting data on you for sale to other parties. Phones are VERY personal, most people wouldn't even share their phone with a friend! Maybe phones have just become too personal as a device? Maybe it is time to close the book on businesses like Google that ship shiny spyware where the utility features of a phone (messaging) is an afterthought...
• imgabe 5y ago
  Google had a great thing with the integration between Google Fi SMS and Hangouts. They could have added E2E encryption and had a comparable product to iMessage. Instead they killed it and switched to the next messaging system flavor of the week and now I can now longer see SMS messages in my gmail window and the whole thing is much worse.
• gourneau 5y ago
  Has anyone tried out the open source project BlueBubbles? "Server for forwarding iMessages to clients within the BlueBubbles App ecosystem" You have to have a mac desktop/laptop/VM to use it. Pretty complex setup process, but looks promising. https://github.com/BlueBubblesApp/BlueBubbles-Server https://github.com/BlueBubblesApp/BlueBubbles-Server
• hstan4 5y ago
  How are we really in a place in the world where making a text message blue instead of green is considered “bullying”?
• unobatbayar 5y ago
  Let it be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• chupchap 5y ago
  If Google had played nice with Microsoft on Windows Mobile they would have more sympathy.
• stonecharioteer 5y ago
  Saruman thinks Sauron is too powerful.
• asdff 5y ago
  The vast majority of iphone users just do not care about imessage, much less even realize that they are sending an imessage instead of a text. If there are really groups of kids who ostracize people because their message bubble is green or whatever that does not surprise me. Kids find 100 dumb excuses to make fun of their peers all the time.
• mandeepj 5y ago
  Is it Google’s way of saying iMessage is well thought through, designed and maintained?
• zer0zzz 5y ago
  Google used YouTube in the same way against Windows Phone. They actively made it technically and legally difficult for Microsoft to develop their own YouTube app for WP while only developing a version for iPhones and android. At least with sms you can still functionally use messaging, but google closed off entire services by actively preventing them from being developed for their competitors platform back in the day.
• doobeeus 5y ago
  Google's point about iMessage is that Apple shouldn't be promoting and profiting from kids bullying each-other. The article's author has a brand he's selling as someone on the Android beat who's willing to poke Google. Google is also making the case that since iMessage bootstrapped itself on SMS/MMS, perhaps it should continue to embrace the updated versions of these standards, enabling encrypted messaging with Android users.
• dbg31415 5y ago
  That's rich coming from Google. If you're a Google Fi users (cell phone service) you have to do some wonky hacks to make iMessage work because Google doesn't support it. Then every time you run a software update, you have to re-enable iMessage. Google lost a fight, and is crying about it. They do EVERYTHING in their power to screw over people on iPhones... and then they want Apple to play fair? Ha. The worst thing is that when you travel between countries, iMessage is really the only good way to text friends without getting silly international text fees. Therefore, all of my friends have to have iPhones... or I've basically stopped texting them. It's sad. But hey, that's on the phone companies too for charging money for texts. It's all shitty. But Google being shitty and then bitching about Apple... that's rich.
• ikiris 5y ago
  If they really want to make iMessage less powerful, they should force them to hire Google's messaging execs.
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  Google shouldn't have given up on hangouts. It worked, sms, messaging, internet calls all from one app. Instead they wanted to get behind an open standard which works but is tied to carriers and phone numbers... I travel a lot and now essentially live in 2 different countries at once so tying all my communication to a phone number is a no-go. Now FB messenger ironically is my go-to (only real cross-platform app that everyone seems to have), even though I'm not a fan of FB at all.
• seandoe 5y ago
  It's funny to read all the apple support here. I would guess most of these people have iphones and think apple just made a better product than google. That's not the issue nor the truth. Android messages works great for Android to Android, just like iMessage, because it does the same thing: routes messages through Google servers if it can, and falls back to sms when it can't. So the issue is that Android to Apple (and vice versa) messaging sucks and Google is looking to fix that. Yes, it's in their business interest, but it's also in all consumers' interest. Though, making it better is certainly not in Apple's interest. They control this "cool-kid" narrative that has all apple users looking down upon anyone who doesn't use apple and thinking apple is just a better product.
• kk6mrp 5y ago
  I don't know about blue and green bubbles, but it is super annoying when somebody "likes" my message. Really? A simple Ok or Thanks will suffice.
• anarticle 5y ago
  Don't forget carriers got us here by charging PER text. I remember when iMessage came out, and for some people it was a way to get away from getting charged for texts. Especially international! Things have changed so much it's hard to see the original inspiration in 200x. As for interop, in 2020s it looks like platforms are the style du jour, things like XMPP didn't quite cut it. I'd be happy to see that change, but for google to lay this claim sounds lazy to me.