No, it's worse than a standard centralized chat app: It's ostensibly federated, with network operators running the servers. But practically, only Google actual

No, it's worse than a standard centralized chat app: It's ostensibly federated, with network operators running the servers. But practically, only Google actually knows how to do that (the specifications are absurdly complicated!), and so they do it for all operators as a service. It's a fig leaf of an open protocol and service even for telco industry standards.