Imagine if Google had implemented the small feature set of iMessage and supported it on all OSes. Imagine how much market share they could have captured.
iMessage benefited tremendously from being the default. Combine that with Apple's mobile market share in the US and you get the present situation.
My gripe isn't really that it won in the US. Its that you need Apple hardware to participate.
Google may be self interested but they're right about one thing: knowingly allowing and fueling this social dynamic is inconsistent with Apple's brand. But it was never really about values, just making consumers feel good about their purchases.
Can WhatsApp do sms/mms now?
Their point is Google should have stuffed their iMessage equivalent (such as Hangouts) inside of a generic texting app that also handled SMS/MMS by default, and then enabled all the same features that Apple did and released it for iOS.
From a user perspective, the Messages app can. I want SMS/MMS seamlessly integrated (like when my cellular data connection dies, the bubbles go green), like the Messages app does. If WhatsApp cannot, then it's definitely missing a huge piece of usability.
It's been said here already that gchat had the features that could be been integrated into Android's SMS app, add end-to-end encryption and they would have crushed the iPhone.