9 ms·

This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. The current version of it that people are using on Android isn't even a "stand

by hbn 3y ago

This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. The current version of it that people are using on Android isn't even a "standard" by any normal usage of the term, it's just another Google messaging service. No one can make their own app, and there's barely any carrier adoption, so Google is basically running the whole network. Does this mean that now if you send a message to someone from an iPhone that doesn't go through iMessage, it will instead go through Google's servers? Sure the service will hopefully be better than SMS but at the cost of giving Google the keys to pretending they're a "standard."

lxgr 3y ago
> This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. Google is literally operating an RCS SaaS company for marketers and telcos, so I'd take any of their statements in support for RCS with a grain of salt: https://jibe.google.com/ https://jibe.google.com/
- hbn 3y ago
  Yup. The shaming campaigns are just a way to play the moral high ground in their effort to replace an actual messaging standard with their own proprietary service. SMS is certainly long overdue to be replaced, but I don't want it replaced with a Google service. Hopefully the iPhone adoption will be some incentive for carriers to implement RCS properly.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    I'm afraid that the only incentive for carriers to invest anything into RCS would be being able to charge for it or use it as a way to lock in their customers. As antiquated as SMS is, at least all carriers support it, and people largely don't need to worry about their existing conversation threads being interrupted when they switch carriers. I believe that that's not true for RCS at least for group conversations.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    I don't really care if the shaming was done in good or bad faith. At the end of the day, I'm an Android user in a sea of iPhone users, and I'm tired of the fact that our default communication mode has to be SMS or MMS. If this fixes that problem, I don't quite care how we got here.
    - izacus 3y ago
      It's kind of bizarre that people here would rather have shitty experience talking to their friends just to defend the honor megacorporations. Apple and Google ARE NOT PEOPLE. They do NOT HAVE FEELINGS you need to defend. Jesus. Being able to send a rich message from iPhone to Android and back (including location, pictures, videos) is really not something that will cause you pain and Apple won't lash out and punish you for it.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        > Apple and Google ARE NOT PEOPLE. That's incorrect. Apple here refers to a group of people, not the fruit. Google here too refers to a group of people, not the software that provides search features. > They do NOT HAVE FEELINGS you need to defend. Their feelings need to be defended as much as any other person. Which, logically, is not at all, but as you are defending your own feelings here what is logical is already violated, so...
        izacus 3y ago
        Let's use the term "corporate entity" instead of "group of people". Because corporate entities do not have human emotions or human properties and actively work on suppressing them to generate (or extract) value.
        randomdata 3y ago
        A 'corporate entity' is just a group of people. Those people absolutely have emotions.
- eitally 3y ago
  To be fair to Google, though, they did not intend to operate this as a SaaS. They fully expected carriers to run their own RCS servers but almost none did, so stepping in to fill the void was a follow-on decision from Google (which was honestly a very smart move - Messages w/RCS is hugely improved over vanilla SMS) only after realizing carriers didn't have the appetite to abandon SMS.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  Nice website. Let's see if we can edit it for another Google product... # Chrome ## Better Browsing for Everyone Web browsing changed the way we communicate, but it’s out of date. Today we want a web browser that lets us do things like watch videos, edit documents in real time, notify us of breaking news, or make video calls. Google Chromium and V8 makes all this possible, and now the browser industry is coming together to bring it to users everywhere. ## The universal Web application While Web applications were designed to move Web browsing beyond reading documents, different approaches made it difficult and costly for websites to bring it to users. By aligning on the W3C's universal Web standards - with the Google Chrome client app - websites can now provide Web applications across the browser ecosystem.
rickdeckard 3y ago
RCS is still standardized and maintained by the GSMA, of which Google is a member. Google acquired Jibe in 2015 in order to get their RCS server and client architecture (Jibe was a leader in shaping the RCS-Standard). Everyone can make his own app, it's just that he would need to develop a whole RCS-client for it to interact with (Google's or carriers') RCS-Servers as well. So what is missing is Google offering their RCS-client with open API's for other apps (than Google Messages) to use. To be fair, maintaining interoperability of those apps with the underlying client would then be a huge endeavour, Google Messages itself is already updating quite frequently...
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  The problem is that Google has a de facto monopoly on RCS. The carriers (full members of GSMA) came up with RCS as a replacement for SMS/MMS at a network level and then didn't have the appetite to implement it. Instead, they either A) adopted Google’s Messages as is, B) adopted Google’s Messages in white label form, slapping their logo on it, or C) made “their own thing” running on Google’s Jibe servers. With very few exceptions, it all goes through Google. And Google uses this to pretend that their proprietary iMessage competitor is “the” RCS standard. The actual RCS standard is dead for all intents and purposes because nobody uses it like that, except for Apple in the short term.
  - rickdeckard 3y ago
    Monopoly is the wrong term here, the root-cause of this situation is that Google is now maintaining the largest OS-implementation of RCS by far, only followed by Samsung, and then some carriers who also use RCS for other platforms (web-apps, STB,...). Apple adopting RCS means that there is another player to balance this field. A much-needed player, and the only one that's relevant (other than maybe WeChat and WhatsApp)- > With very few exceptions, it all goes through Google. Yeah, because the mobile end-device for RCS is currently always an Android device. If there would be support from Apple, an RCS-server of Apple could handle the communication to Apple-Devices. The idea of every carrier owning his own RCS-server was anyway already dead before the first client was released. The number of carriers never increased after the initial rollout of the major working-group members, simply because there is no way to charge for the service and monetization of such a small userbase with other services was not sustainable. It's worth to put this into time-context here: When work on RCS (or "RCS-e") was initiated, WhatsApp was already well-established and leading the European market.
spiralpolitik 3y ago
That's the trap door in this. Apple is going to implement RCS exactly as the specification says it should be implemented, no more or no less. Any incompatibilities with Android will be laid at Google's door to resolve. Having beaten Apple with the RCS stick for the last year, Google might find themselves now getting beaten back.
- hfjjbf 3y ago
  [dead]
- eek2121 3y ago
  I am okay with this.
- matwood 3y ago
  Apple also stated they would work to add encryption to the RCS spec, poking Google in the eye with their proprietary model. Of course this might not ever happen, but it's still fun to see big companies taking jabs at each other.
  - Smoosh 3y ago
    When elephants fight, the grass suffers.
    - parineum 3y ago
      When companies compete, consumers win.
      - donny2018 3y ago
        Unless they conspire in $20B/year search agreements.
        paholg 3y ago
        That's not competition.
makeitdouble 3y ago
> No one can make their own app Google did, Apple will, what stops other companies from doing it aside from effort and money ? > and there's barely any carrier adoption Expecting carriers to do adopt new technologies is usually a losing bet.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  See the parent comment.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Parent comments is positing that only Google can do it with no specific argument on why it would be so. For instance, why would Samsung be barred from doing it ? What about Nothing ? Xiaomi ? The "monopoly" argument feels like vague hand waiving to me. It's probably a complex and costly situation, but nothing close to why we don't have different browser engines on iOS for instance.
    - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      The recent revelations about Google paying 36% of revenue from iOS to Apple made me wonder if that had something to do with the browser-engine lockdown. I guess it depends on what the terms of the deal are and whether it depends on the user agents conveyed by the browsers. Apple might want to make damned sure that there's no mistaking or misrepresenting traffic from their platform.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. But the point to me is that I don't care whether it's "bad faith" or not, just that (again, to me) it's actually the correct point of view. Messaging integration between iOS and Android, in the US at least, is not just fundamentally broken, but the presence of a single Android user in an iMessage group chat can break the experience for everyone (e.g. potato quality video), and if you are the "odd man out" on the Android people start resenting your presence in the chat (and, to be clear, I'm middle aged, not in middle school). For an example, see https://www.instagram.com/p/CwLKeGRLieb/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CwLKeGRLieb/ There is no reason for there to be such messaging incompatibility between iOS and Android. My feeling is that Apple knows the regulatory winds are shifting very much against anticompetitive behavior, and their iMessage incompatibility was just looking like the blatant protectionism that it is.
- gigatexal 3y ago
  > There is no reason for there to be such messaging incompatibility between iOS and Android. My feeling is that Apple knows the regulatory winds are shifting very much against anticompetitive behavior, and their iMessage incompatibility was just looking like the blatant protectionism that it is. iMessage is and always was for iPhone users to communicate with other iPhone users. It will send messages over SMS as a fallback but it was only ever for use in communicating with other iOS devices in the same way iOS is only for Apple devices. I see all arguments to force Apple to open up iMessage as punishing them for building a platform that people want that the majority of the US has bought into. And android is bigger everywhere outside the US. Also Europe has already solved this. If you want to talk to iPhone and android users in Europe you just use WhatsApp or another third-party service. Why must Apple dilute the experience to communicate with folks not on its platform? In electric car charging Tesla built out the super charger network investing billions in service of making their cars more useful. (iMessage is this to iPhone users.) there’s another standard out there or handfuls of other methods of charging cars but the market leader is the super charger network. And wouldn’t you know? Folks are adopting it because Tesla is licensing it but it was their choice. To force Apple to open up iMessage as a protocol to other devices by fiat seems wholly totalitarian and invasive.
kmeisthax 3y ago
When you set up a new phone on Google Fi, the first thing Messages tells you to do is turn RCS off, because for whatever reason Google can't make Fi's native cross-device SMS[0] work with RCS. It's a damned shame. [0] Google Fi integrates with Messages for Web to allow you to use your phone number even if your phone is damaged or destroyed. It's absolutely amazing. I've used this (back when it was Hangouts integration) to use my number on an iPod touch and it worked surprisingly well when I was waiting for a replacement on my Nexus 6P that I had shattered. I also have Messages for Web pinned to my iPad dock for similar reasons.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- neodymiumphish 3y ago
  This is the one thing that makes me comfortable about continuing to use Google Voice for voice-mail and as a spare phone number for less important services. Otherwise, I'd expect Google to discontinue this service and tell me to fuck off by now.
plastic_bag 3y ago
Google Messages app sends a lot of spam here in India if RCS is enabled. I confirmed this with some of friends who experienced the same thing. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has an app called DND which lets you register your phone number to opt out of marketing and promotional SMSes. It works really well and in case someone sends you a promotional SMS despite opting out, you can report them to your SIM provider (or carrier) and they are legally required to take an action. But as soon as RCS is enabled, you will magically start receiving a lot of spam messages with rich text and link previews. Unfortunately, the DND app cannot see or detect those messages which means you cannot report them.
gertrunde 3y ago
> there's barely any carrier adoption That might be country dependent, in the UK the four largest networks do officially support RCS I believe (combined market share of around 85-90%).

by hbn 3y ago

lxgr 3y ago

> This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. Google is literally operating an RCS SaaS company for marketers and telcos, so I'd take any of their statements in support for RCS with a grain of salt: https://jibe.google.com/ https://jibe.google.com/

hbn 3y ago
Yup. The shaming campaigns are just a way to play the moral high ground in their effort to replace an actual messaging standard with their own proprietary service. SMS is certainly long overdue to be replaced, but I don't want it replaced with a Google service. Hopefully the iPhone adoption will be some incentive for carriers to implement RCS properly.
- lxgr 3y ago
  I'm afraid that the only incentive for carriers to invest anything into RCS would be being able to charge for it or use it as a way to lock in their customers. As antiquated as SMS is, at least all carriers support it, and people largely don't need to worry about their existing conversation threads being interrupted when they switch carriers. I believe that that's not true for RCS at least for group conversations.
- kelnos 3y ago
  I don't really care if the shaming was done in good or bad faith. At the end of the day, I'm an Android user in a sea of iPhone users, and I'm tired of the fact that our default communication mode has to be SMS or MMS. If this fixes that problem, I don't quite care how we got here.
  - izacus 3y ago
    It's kind of bizarre that people here would rather have shitty experience talking to their friends just to defend the honor megacorporations. Apple and Google ARE NOT PEOPLE. They do NOT HAVE FEELINGS you need to defend. Jesus. Being able to send a rich message from iPhone to Android and back (including location, pictures, videos) is really not something that will cause you pain and Apple won't lash out and punish you for it.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > Apple and Google ARE NOT PEOPLE. That's incorrect. Apple here refers to a group of people, not the fruit. Google here too refers to a group of people, not the software that provides search features. > They do NOT HAVE FEELINGS you need to defend. Their feelings need to be defended as much as any other person. Which, logically, is not at all, but as you are defending your own feelings here what is logical is already violated, so...
      - izacus 3y ago
        Let's use the term "corporate entity" instead of "group of people". Because corporate entities do not have human emotions or human properties and actively work on suppressing them to generate (or extract) value.
        randomdata 3y ago
        A 'corporate entity' is just a group of people. Those people absolutely have emotions.
eitally 3y ago
To be fair to Google, though, they did not intend to operate this as a SaaS. They fully expected carriers to run their own RCS servers but almost none did, so stepping in to fill the void was a follow-on decision from Google (which was honestly a very smart move - Messages w/RCS is hugely improved over vanilla SMS) only after realizing carriers didn't have the appetite to abandon SMS.
chatmasta 3y ago
Nice website. Let's see if we can edit it for another Google product... # Chrome ## Better Browsing for Everyone Web browsing changed the way we communicate, but it’s out of date. Today we want a web browser that lets us do things like watch videos, edit documents in real time, notify us of breaking news, or make video calls. Google Chromium and V8 makes all this possible, and now the browser industry is coming together to bring it to users everywhere. ## The universal Web application While Web applications were designed to move Web browsing beyond reading documents, different approaches made it difficult and costly for websites to bring it to users. By aligning on the W3C's universal Web standards - with the Google Chrome client app - websites can now provide Web applications across the browser ecosystem.

rickdeckard 3y ago

RCS is still standardized and maintained by the GSMA, of which Google is a member. Google acquired Jibe in 2015 in order to get their RCS server and client architecture (Jibe was a leader in shaping the RCS-Standard). Everyone can make his own app, it's just that he would need to develop a whole RCS-client for it to interact with (Google's or carriers') RCS-Servers as well. So what is missing is Google offering their RCS-client with open API's for other apps (than Google Messages) to use. To be fair, maintaining interoperability of those apps with the underlying client would then be a huge endeavour, Google Messages itself is already updating quite frequently...

turquoisevar 3y ago
The problem is that Google has a de facto monopoly on RCS. The carriers (full members of GSMA) came up with RCS as a replacement for SMS/MMS at a network level and then didn't have the appetite to implement it. Instead, they either A) adopted Google’s Messages as is, B) adopted Google’s Messages in white label form, slapping their logo on it, or C) made “their own thing” running on Google’s Jibe servers. With very few exceptions, it all goes through Google. And Google uses this to pretend that their proprietary iMessage competitor is “the” RCS standard. The actual RCS standard is dead for all intents and purposes because nobody uses it like that, except for Apple in the short term.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  Monopoly is the wrong term here, the root-cause of this situation is that Google is now maintaining the largest OS-implementation of RCS by far, only followed by Samsung, and then some carriers who also use RCS for other platforms (web-apps, STB,...). Apple adopting RCS means that there is another player to balance this field. A much-needed player, and the only one that's relevant (other than maybe WeChat and WhatsApp)- > With very few exceptions, it all goes through Google. Yeah, because the mobile end-device for RCS is currently always an Android device. If there would be support from Apple, an RCS-server of Apple could handle the communication to Apple-Devices. The idea of every carrier owning his own RCS-server was anyway already dead before the first client was released. The number of carriers never increased after the initial rollout of the major working-group members, simply because there is no way to charge for the service and monetization of such a small userbase with other services was not sustainable. It's worth to put this into time-context here: When work on RCS (or "RCS-e") was initiated, WhatsApp was already well-established and leading the European market.

spiralpolitik 3y ago

That's the trap door in this. Apple is going to implement RCS exactly as the specification says it should be implemented, no more or no less. Any incompatibilities with Android will be laid at Google's door to resolve. Having beaten Apple with the RCS stick for the last year, Google might find themselves now getting beaten back.

hfjjbf 3y ago
[dead]
eek2121 3y ago
I am okay with this.
matwood 3y ago
Apple also stated they would work to add encryption to the RCS spec, poking Google in the eye with their proprietary model. Of course this might not ever happen, but it's still fun to see big companies taking jabs at each other.
- Smoosh 3y ago
  When elephants fight, the grass suffers.
  - parineum 3y ago
    When companies compete, consumers win.
    - donny2018 3y ago
      Unless they conspire in $20B/year search agreements.
      - paholg 3y ago
        That's not competition.

makeitdouble 3y ago

> No one can make their own app Google did, Apple will, what stops other companies from doing it aside from effort and money ? > and there's barely any carrier adoption Expecting carriers to do adopt new technologies is usually a losing bet.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
See the parent comment.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Parent comments is positing that only Google can do it with no specific argument on why it would be so. For instance, why would Samsung be barred from doing it ? What about Nothing ? Xiaomi ? The "monopoly" argument feels like vague hand waiving to me. It's probably a complex and costly situation, but nothing close to why we don't have different browser engines on iOS for instance.
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    The recent revelations about Google paying 36% of revenue from iOS to Apple made me wonder if that had something to do with the browser-engine lockdown. I guess it depends on what the terms of the deal are and whether it depends on the user agents conveyed by the browsers. Apple might want to make damned sure that there's no mistaking or misrepresenting traffic from their platform.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. But the point to me is that I don't care whether it's "bad faith" or not, just that (again, to me) it's actually the correct point of view. Messaging integration between iOS and Android, in the US at least, is not just fundamentally broken, but the presence of a single Android user in an iMessage group chat can break the experience for everyone (e.g. potato quality video), and if you are the "odd man out" on the Android people start resenting your presence in the chat (and, to be clear, I'm middle aged, not in middle school). For an example, see https://www.instagram.com/p/CwLKeGRLieb/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CwLKeGRLieb/ There is no reason for there to be such messaging incompatibility between iOS and Android. My feeling is that Apple knows the regulatory winds are shifting very much against anticompetitive behavior, and their iMessage incompatibility was just looking like the blatant protectionism that it is.

gigatexal 3y ago
> There is no reason for there to be such messaging incompatibility between iOS and Android. My feeling is that Apple knows the regulatory winds are shifting very much against anticompetitive behavior, and their iMessage incompatibility was just looking like the blatant protectionism that it is. iMessage is and always was for iPhone users to communicate with other iPhone users. It will send messages over SMS as a fallback but it was only ever for use in communicating with other iOS devices in the same way iOS is only for Apple devices. I see all arguments to force Apple to open up iMessage as punishing them for building a platform that people want that the majority of the US has bought into. And android is bigger everywhere outside the US. Also Europe has already solved this. If you want to talk to iPhone and android users in Europe you just use WhatsApp or another third-party service. Why must Apple dilute the experience to communicate with folks not on its platform? In electric car charging Tesla built out the super charger network investing billions in service of making their cars more useful. (iMessage is this to iPhone users.) there’s another standard out there or handfuls of other methods of charging cars but the market leader is the super charger network. And wouldn’t you know? Folks are adopting it because Tesla is licensing it but it was their choice. To force Apple to open up iMessage as a protocol to other devices by fiat seems wholly totalitarian and invasive.

kmeisthax 3y ago

When you set up a new phone on Google Fi, the first thing Messages tells you to do is turn RCS off, because for whatever reason Google can't make Fi's native cross-device SMS[0] work with RCS. It's a damned shame. [0] Google Fi integrates with Messages for Web to allow you to use your phone number even if your phone is damaged or destroyed. It's absolutely amazing. I've used this (back when it was Hangouts integration) to use my number on an iPod touch and it worked surprisingly well when I was waiting for a replacement on my Nexus 6P that I had shattered. I also have Messages for Web pinned to my iPad dock for similar reasons.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neodymiumphish 3y ago
This is the one thing that makes me comfortable about continuing to use Google Voice for voice-mail and as a spare phone number for less important services. Otherwise, I'd expect Google to discontinue this service and tell me to fuck off by now.

plastic_bag 3y ago

Google Messages app sends a lot of spam here in India if RCS is enabled. I confirmed this with some of friends who experienced the same thing. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has an app called DND which lets you register your phone number to opt out of marketing and promotional SMSes. It works really well and in case someone sends you a promotional SMS despite opting out, you can report them to your SIM provider (or carrier) and they are legally required to take an action. But as soon as RCS is enabled, you will magically start receiving a lot of spam messages with rich text and link previews. Unfortunately, the DND app cannot see or detect those messages which means you cannot report them.

gertrunde 3y ago

> there's barely any carrier adoption That might be country dependent, in the UK the four largest networks do officially support RCS I believe (combined market share of around 85-90%).