I've recently looked at the suite of protocols underlying RCS (or so at least I think; the standards landscape is as confusing as ever), and it's baffling how t

I've recently looked at the suite of protocols underlying RCS (or so at least I think; the standards landscape is as confusing as ever), and it's baffling how the industry ended up with that when XMPP was... just there. The contortions they had to do to cram server-based federated instant messaging into the context of the SIP protocol stack by sheer force are something to behold. I can only assume this is entirely by design – the more needless complexity, the more opportunity to patent things (or at least keep competitors out): As far as I understand it, practically all carriers are just outsourcing the entire thing to Google.