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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Its annoying as hell, because iMessage isn't really useful when most of the people I write to don't have an iPhone.

100% I blame Google though, they need to get their ass together and make their own. It needs to work with everbody who already have a google account and they need to commit to it for 10 year minimum.

Then it is reasonable for Apple to create a system so they can talk together.

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> It needs to work with everbody who already have a google account and they need to commit to it for 10 year minimum

This already exists. 10 years ago, Google Hangouts was separated from Google+. It is currently accessible through the Gmail web interface, Gmail app, and "Chat" app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

> It is currently accessible through the Gmail web interface, Gmail app, and "Chat" app.

None of these are a good substitute for messaging like SMS or iMessage.

Why? I use it all the time for that.

Did that ship with Samsung phones?

But they still have the chat app in gmail, then there was that allo thing as well, and whatnot.. Google honestly should be diagnosed with ADHD with that attention span.

Crazily, they also have something that looks just like it inside the either the Docs or Drive app, but it doesn't have the same chat history as the one under GMail!

I dismissed a notification with photos from my wife and then had a hard time figuring out where that conversation was, because it seemed like it would be chat but wasn't.

Google built more messaging apps than people have fingers in one hand, possibly two. They are not good at them.

Even if they would, what's the incentive for Apple to become interoperable? They want a moat and people that buy what they sell inside the moat.

Incentive is to make it better for their users who have Android friends. They already did that with the last update that meant you could do Facetime group calls with them.

What's wrong with RCS?

I don't understand -- are Android users not able to receive your iPhone text messages? I've never had that problem.

SMS vs data. iPhone to iPhone uses a data connection with richer media sharing features. Plus SMS is in a different color, so you can easily/remotely judge your peer for using Android.

> ... judge your peer for not using iPhone.

Ftfy. It's not just iOS and Android out there.

Also, even on an iphone you can turn off iMessage and always use SMS. I'd recommend that as a way to avoid lock-in.

Sure, but I would also like to send them pictures and I would like some security about it too.

Google created RCS - it does exactly what you are requesting.

But support for it is tepid - even Google Voice doesn't support it.

Google did not create RCS. Google has endorsed RCS and implemented it to some extent.

Also, it is just fake open-source, at the end of the day all your data goes through google’s servers, with optional encryption that will be decrypted when you talk to an old device — that’s security theater.

Doesn't the encryption support depend on the messaging app? Meaning old devices could easily just update (even auto-update) to a newer version of Messages that does support encryption?

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