Google/Apple needed it to fill the moat for Japanese phone market - for Google it was because Japanese carriers were stripping emoji from outgoing emails, and f

Google/Apple needed it to fill the moat for Japanese phone market - for Google it was because Japanese carriers were stripping emoji from outgoing emails, and for Apple it was because iPhone as a real phone and not an Internet-connected pocket PC with voice call had to support the SoftBank emoji set. And yeah, :slack-style-emoji-notation: is superior. It was just a historical necessity for Google/Apple.