4 ms·

But realistically I don't know why any carrier would give a damn about this. In 2013, SMS was already irrelevant in most of the world. And in the US pretty much

But realistically I don't know why any carrier would give a damn about this. In 2013, SMS was already irrelevant in most of the world. And in the US pretty much everyone had had unlimited texting for a while. Encouraging people towards OTT messaging was beneficial to carriers that were now ubiquitously making money on data packages, not texts/calls.

Zak 2y ago
End users are not the only customers for SMS. A large number of automated notifications, confirmations, and 2FA codes are sent that way, and carriers get paid for it.
- hocuspocus 2y ago
  And how is this relevant to Hangouts acting as the default SMS client for a minority of subscribers?
  - Zak 2y ago
    If it was nearly every Android device, it wouldn't have been a minority in the mid 2010s. I don't have an authoritative citation, but complaints from carriers is often reported as the reason Google backed away from the default SMS client decision. Here's one example, but I've seen it from other publications: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/rip-google-hangouts-googles-last-best-chance-to-compete-with-imessage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/rip-google-hangouts-...
    - hocuspocus 2y ago
      It really was a tiny minority, almost nobody bought Google phones at the time. The vast majority of Android users never even knew of the Hangouts SMS integration. I had a Nexus 4 and then 5 in 2013 and even though I was a big Hangouts user, I quickly disabled the SMS integration as it served no purpose in my case. It would be extremely weird for carriers to pressure Google on such a niche feature among Android users when Apple actually pulled it off successfully for the other half of their subscribers. > Google caved and introduced the standalone Google Messages in the next Android release. This was more likely motivated by Jibe's acquisition and Google pushing a big revamp of RCS (Universal Profile) at the GSMA. Ars also forgets to mention Allo. Google's strategy was a complete mess on its own, no need to blame carriers.
      - Zak 2y ago
        Here's a related story from the period about why Microsoft didn't try something similar with Skype: https://www.pcworld.com/article/447285/why-skype-still-cant-compete-with-imessage-its-all-about-greed-grudges-and-fear.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/447285/why-skype-still-cant-... I can't help but think carriers were the reason Samsung didn't make Hangouts the default SMS client, which contributed to Hangouts not gaining momentum fast enough, which led to Google acquiring Jibe and launching other chat products.
        hocuspocus 2y ago
        In retrospect this seems like a silly concern given the Windows Phone market share and how obvious the solution was: > and once shared-data plans reach critical mass, Verizon and other companies will have an active incentive to encourage the use of messaging services like Skype. More Web-sent data requires a beefier data allotment, after all. Wasn't that already the case?! I didn't really follow plans available in the US around 2012-2013, but in East Asia and Europe, making subscribers pay more for bigger and faster data packages on LTE is exactly what every carrier was doing. Regarding Samsung phones, of course Samsung had a good relationship with carriers and would typically be more willing to bend to their will, for instance by delaying and doing staged rollouts of firmware upgrades. However this isn't the main reason here. Samsung was absolutely dominating the Android market, being pretty much the only player making comfortable profit margins on the hardware. On the other hand, Samsung's leadership understood that there was nothing easier than moving from an Android phone to another, and that eventually a big part of the cake would be eaten by Chinese OEMs. Samsung worked hard on building its own brand of phones with One UI and its predecessors. The leadership absolutely hated the fact Google forced so many apps being preinstalled on certified Android phones. Hence people complaining about the number of duplicate apps seen as bloatware, sometimes rightfully so. I don't think Samsung was afraid carriers would take offense at something as ubiquitous as OTT messaging. Case in point, I had coworkers working on ChatON, our own version of iMessage/FaceTime. This was a flop obviously, which is a bit sad since I believe Samsung had a real chance to acquire KakaoTalk around that time.
        2y ago
- jorvi 2y ago
  > End users are not the only customers for SMS. A large number of automated notifications, confirmations, and 2FA codes are sent that way, and carriers get paid for it. Not just paid, they gouge their enterprise customers for it. Signal did a cost breakdown[0] and of their $13.7 million infra costs, a whopping $6 million is "registration fees". [0]https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

Zak 2y ago

End users are not the only customers for SMS. A large number of automated notifications, confirmations, and 2FA codes are sent that way, and carriers get paid for it.

hocuspocus 2y ago
And how is this relevant to Hangouts acting as the default SMS client for a minority of subscribers?
- Zak 2y ago
  If it was nearly every Android device, it wouldn't have been a minority in the mid 2010s. I don't have an authoritative citation, but complaints from carriers is often reported as the reason Google backed away from the default SMS client decision. Here's one example, but I've seen it from other publications: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/rip-google-hangouts-googles-last-best-chance-to-compete-with-imessage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/rip-google-hangouts-...
  - hocuspocus 2y ago
    It really was a tiny minority, almost nobody bought Google phones at the time. The vast majority of Android users never even knew of the Hangouts SMS integration. I had a Nexus 4 and then 5 in 2013 and even though I was a big Hangouts user, I quickly disabled the SMS integration as it served no purpose in my case. It would be extremely weird for carriers to pressure Google on such a niche feature among Android users when Apple actually pulled it off successfully for the other half of their subscribers. > Google caved and introduced the standalone Google Messages in the next Android release. This was more likely motivated by Jibe's acquisition and Google pushing a big revamp of RCS (Universal Profile) at the GSMA. Ars also forgets to mention Allo. Google's strategy was a complete mess on its own, no need to blame carriers.
    - Zak 2y ago
      Here's a related story from the period about why Microsoft didn't try something similar with Skype: https://www.pcworld.com/article/447285/why-skype-still-cant-compete-with-imessage-its-all-about-greed-grudges-and-fear.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/447285/why-skype-still-cant-... I can't help but think carriers were the reason Samsung didn't make Hangouts the default SMS client, which contributed to Hangouts not gaining momentum fast enough, which led to Google acquiring Jibe and launching other chat products.
      - hocuspocus 2y ago
        In retrospect this seems like a silly concern given the Windows Phone market share and how obvious the solution was: > and once shared-data plans reach critical mass, Verizon and other companies will have an active incentive to encourage the use of messaging services like Skype. More Web-sent data requires a beefier data allotment, after all. Wasn't that already the case?! I didn't really follow plans available in the US around 2012-2013, but in East Asia and Europe, making subscribers pay more for bigger and faster data packages on LTE is exactly what every carrier was doing. Regarding Samsung phones, of course Samsung had a good relationship with carriers and would typically be more willing to bend to their will, for instance by delaying and doing staged rollouts of firmware upgrades. However this isn't the main reason here. Samsung was absolutely dominating the Android market, being pretty much the only player making comfortable profit margins on the hardware. On the other hand, Samsung's leadership understood that there was nothing easier than moving from an Android phone to another, and that eventually a big part of the cake would be eaten by Chinese OEMs. Samsung worked hard on building its own brand of phones with One UI and its predecessors. The leadership absolutely hated the fact Google forced so many apps being preinstalled on certified Android phones. Hence people complaining about the number of duplicate apps seen as bloatware, sometimes rightfully so. I don't think Samsung was afraid carriers would take offense at something as ubiquitous as OTT messaging. Case in point, I had coworkers working on ChatON, our own version of iMessage/FaceTime. This was a flop obviously, which is a bit sad since I believe Samsung had a real chance to acquire KakaoTalk around that time.
        2y ago
jorvi 2y ago
> End users are not the only customers for SMS. A large number of automated notifications, confirmations, and 2FA codes are sent that way, and carriers get paid for it. Not just paid, they gouge their enterprise customers for it. Signal did a cost breakdown[0] and of their $13.7 million infra costs, a whopping $6 million is "registration fees". [0]https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/