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Comment by sparrish | Hacker News Reader

I think Google killing off SMS features is a direct results of Verizon adding an additional $0.0025 fee per SMS, which other carriers are sure to follow. The costs could quickly add up.

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I suspect that it's because the feature was designed before most people had smartphones and it's easier on everyone to just provide the notifications in the Voice app.

Especially with the great Android integration (Voice is used for calls from the system dialer, etc.) getting a transcript text is redundant because you're getting text via Voice anyway. I bet the transcript texts are just rarely used anymore.

I still use them because it's a lot faster to open and read the message than it is to call into voice mail, navigate their prompts and actually listen to the message.

Do you not use the app?

My phone isn't supported, so no, I don't use their app.

Oh is that what they're removing - the duplicates of Voice texts that come through my normal carrier? Wonderful. Those are so pointless.

I was just ranting about the dialer UI they added to the web UI, but after a few days they updated it so that it auto-hide if your viewport is narrow enough.

I doubt it. I think it is a result of moving away from hangouts and to the new voip backend. Likely just cleaning house on some features that were rarely used. The voicemail transcripts are still forwarded to email and available in the app and web interface. SMS isn't changing otherwise.

huh? where is this news? texts have been free for like ~15 years (where as they used to be pay per text)

The fee is being added on the wholesale/commercial side (bulk senders), not the consumer side. See https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360008372654-Co... or you can google "Verizon $0.0025" to find announcements from several other service providers.

I certainly hope those bulk commercial SMS fees add up. SMS spam is bad enough as it is.

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