I wish someone would write a good article, not US centric, about the current state of RCS but I haven't found any so far.

From what I understand, Google has gone from pushing an open standard to carriers, to pretty much steamrolling their own (Jibe) infrastructure.

Some carriers implemented Universal Profile on their own, probably a bit too late to Google's taste, and are now completely left out as they cannot interconnect to a federated RCS network.

And I know from personal sources that FB is currently working on integrating RCS into FB messenger (I'm not sure about target markets though).

I own a Pixel and I don't mind using Google's Messages app, but if the goal is avoiding Whatsapp (or whatever local competitor) to become the de facto messaging platform, RCS doesn't look much better.

And a big question remains: who's going to force Apple to support RCS?