Hacker News Reader

RCS is a GSM standard (like SMS). So there is nothing to shut down. It's up to the carriers whether they want to support it or not. And support seems to be ok worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

View on HN

Are they seriously re-doing MMS?

I think he was talking about the new messaging service - as Google have a history of turning things off.

Google aren't building a service. The "Google Chat" app is just an RCS client.

Ahh. Thank you.

That's the point though: this isn't a new messaging service, it is a protocol standard that will be implemented by carriers, not Google. It is not thing that Google will shut down because there is nothing to shut down.

We have better alternatives (Signal, WhatsApp...) for those who care. Those who don't will continue using SMS, and for those, RCS is a good step forward.

Bit of a technicality that though isn't it. An alternate way of saying it is "Android to stop supporting RCS messages in the messaging app"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com