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Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

Google acting like RCS is the hot new standard is pretty disingenuous. In theory it's a standard, but in reality most carriers haven't been interested and haven't implemented it so the vast majority of RCS messages are routed through Google.

I can't really blame Apple for not being interested in adopting a "standard" that's mostly Google pretending to be a standard.

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RCS is infinitely better than the current state. Google isn't pretending it's a standard. They're trying to improve messaging between android and iphone uers. Apple won't because the current standard helps their business. It's pretty simple.

> Google isn't pretending it's a standard.

They call it “the modern industry standard” half a dozen times on the page. Zero mention of their affiliation.

First RCS version been developed in late 00. Google had and has zero affiliation with it. What RCS today been published in 2016 and again, Google had no affiliation. Google wasn't even the first one to support RCS - it was Samsung in 2012.

Google, however, added their own extension for E2EE and started roll out with their self-hosted RCS rather than carrier hosted.

Given that RCS is mandatory in 5G networks and supported by world's largest carriers - Yes, it's an industry standard. Given that version used today is published in 2016 - Yes, it's modern. So, what's the problem?

RCS has zero carrier support (in fact carriers are trying to develop their own competing standard). Why would anyone (Apple or otherwise) buy into an already fragmented Google "standard" knowing full well that Google has a pernicious habit of killing off messaging products?

There are at least a few major carriers in North America offering RCS support.

One-on-one E2EE is a big deal and I would to see Apple on-board with it too, including without iCloud exceptions.

Unfortunately they did implement WebP support in WebKit…

Just wondering, why "Unfortunately"?

I’m not the person you replied to, but personally I really hate Google‘s tendency to create their own “standard” and then just shove it down everyone’s throat because they’re so ridiculously big and important.

Speedy and WebP were two examples. RCS already existed (I believe) but basically every single carrier has dragged their feet on it to the point of doing almost nothing (at least in the US) so now Google is basically running the entire thing through their network just to get it to work for their customers because carriers are incompetent/indifferent/directly opposed.

But I doubt that last part was listed in the article.

Android and Chrome too. They are products, not open source. Google uses its lawyers to jump through loopholes and lie about being open

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but with better PR

Yes, exactly, thank you. Nobody used WebP, and then Chrome used WebP, and now everybody has to use WebP because of Chrome's dominance, regardless of whether there might be better alternatives out there. They're trying to do the same with WebM but Webkit has held out on that one so far (not sure if FF has).

And then you have Cloudflare doing crap like automatically reconverting JPEGs to WebPs so when you try to download a JPEG you can use anywhere you end up with a WebP you can pretty much only use in a browser.

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