Comment by eftychis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eftychis | Hacker News Reader

RCS is dead. The Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) has given up. Google is the one still pushing for it. iMessage is simply a big Apple moat. Why would Apple give it up to enhance Google's business position?

Google wants us to pick theirs over Apple's. Also note that to my knowledge, RCS is not available in all countries.

The other funny thing is that Google complains about SMS being insecure -- all while RCS does not support end to end encryption. Google Messages added that feature recently relatively (last year? please correct me below) and I still can't understand if it's on by default or not.

Here is a random article about RCS state. Feel free to google for more: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1327240-in-the-us-rcs-text-m...

I would love a common solution, but rationally I can not blame Apple for keeping a (to me from experiencing both) superior experience that brings in customers. And Google has just managed to catch up. Google will need to make their messaging an order or two better, to the point that Apple will have to join.

P.S. Also, I am skeptical any time the phrases privacy, end-to-end encryption, and Google cohabitate the same statement.

(Edit)P.S.2. Just use https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/bluebubbles/9P3XF8KJ... in the meantime.

A lot has happened with RCS since that random article.

* All of the major US carriers announced that they'd ship Google Messages by default on android phones (including RCS). I believe Verizon was the last one [1].

* Google enabled end-to-end encryption by default for 1:1 chats [2]. They've said that e2e for group chats is coming later this year [3].

* Samsung replaced their own messaging client with a tweaked version of Google Messages on the S22 (edit: in the US) [4]. Samsung Messages already supported RCS, but I'm not sure if it supported Google's extensions like e2e.

And as others have mentioned: this isn't about Google wanting Apple to replace iMessage with RCS; it's about Google wanting Apple to support RCS as iMessage fallback in addition to the existing SMS support. Apple to Apple would certainly still be iMessage.

1: https://9to5google.com/2021/07/20/verizon-will-adopt-google-...

2: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-enables-end-t...

3: https://9to5google.com/2022/05/11/google-messages-rcs-group-...

4: https://www.androidpolice.com/samsung-galaxy-s22-series-ship...

And as you can see in my comment "what is Apple's motive for giving up their moat?"

Edit: I am not sure I understand why the downvote. Also disagreement should not be expressed with downvote. I was stressing that my point (and Apple's I guess) is it doesn't make business sense what Google is asking.

SMS isn't their moat, though. They wouldn't give up iMessage.

Supporting RCS (again, in addition to iMessage) would make their product better: it would allow higher quality media to be sent to and received from non-Apple users; it would allow for typing indicators and read receipts with non-Apple users; and (perhaps most importantly) it would allow - if Apple adopted Google's extensions - e2e encryption with non-Apple users. Apple loves privacy, after all.

If that's not called moat, I don't know what is.

It results in a better experience for their users, but it would not improve their business. It would lower the barrier to switching from iOS to Android. A lot of people, myself included, only have an iPhone because of iMessage. I would love if my iPhone supported RCS. But that is at least in part because it would pave the way to me being free from Apple (not that I’d necessarily switch). And that hurts Apple directly.

It also hurts them because it decreases their network effect. If people do not encourage each other to move to iMessage because RCS is more available, fewer users switch to iPhones.

To add to this, Xiaomi and Oppo, which collectively dominate the South Asian markets and has big presence in Europe, also dropped their own messaging app a few years ago in favor of Google Messages app.

I run a phone business in Australia which is, as far as I'm aware, the only product that supports voice, txt and picture messaging on a virtual number outside of North America.

Ever since I built the product, people have been telling me SMS is obsolete and RCS is coming (4 years now). Google bought Jibe Mobile in 2015, if you go to the Jibe website and try to submit their "Get Started" form there is an error.

I have tried to get in touch with carriers to find out how to connect up RCS from my product (because hey, don't want to get behind the 8 ball) and haven't found any way to get it set up, even when asking my upstream providers.

I really don't think RCS is going anywhere, but if it is, it would be good to be able to build it into my product!

[0] http://www.benkophone.com/

IIRC with RCS, carriers don't run the infrastructure, Google does.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s a federated system with each carrier supposed to run things for their customers.

Why does it work today? After years of begging Google gave up and put all their users without carrier support (basically everyone) onto a Google RCS instance.

Despite how the article tries to portray things in many ways it’s iMessage but worse. With Google running everything it might as well be proprietary. And it lacks full E2E encryption.

Things probably would’ve been better off if Google had just stuck to their own private protocol and used that instead, perhaps opening it.

Telstra kicked off RCS in Australia, but only on their network, then Google did one for everyone else, but it doesn't work with Telstra AFACT.

Vodafone has this business RCS page:

https://www.vodafone.com/business/carrier-services/messaging...

and they "launched" in 2018, but from what I can tell still no-one is using it.

There's a lot of confusion around it.

> from what I can tell still no-one is using it.

> There's a lot of confusion around it.

The story of every feature introduced by telcos in the last 100 years that goes beyond voice calls or text messages.

I seem to recall a similar picture when SMS was introduced. For many years, you couldn't text people outside your phone network.

It's not just on the telcos, Android fragmentation as a whole makes implementing new network features an uphill battle. VoLTE is an absolute mess (on Android) if your build doesn't have settings for your carrier. Google doesn't sell the Pixel in my country, so the only way to enable VoLTE here is to root your device. This is only going to get worse with carriers sunsetting 3G networks - anyone roaming on a Pixel in such a country won't be able to make calls, even to emergency numbers.

Maybe it's dead in the US, but German providers added support in 2021. Of course everyone here already uses cross platform messengers, so I guess it's dead, here, too.

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