Apple has over 75% of 18-24 year olds with their phone in their pocket.
iMessage has always worked with any device that supports SMS.
Google, on the other hand, actively blocked Windows Phone from having access to Youtube. Even when Microsoft paid to write a Youtube app themselves, Google blocked it.
Google did the same thing and blocked Youtube on Amazon's Echo Show.
> app.)...In the absence of a strategy to become the primary messaging service for [the] bulk of cell phone users, I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
It's not blocking at all, when you explicitly support interoperation.
The only example that can obviously be called "blocking" is when Google used it's internet video monopoly as a weapon against Microsoft's competing smart phone platform.
Refusing to allow anyone to produce a Youtube app for Windows Phone isn't even in the same zip code as Google not writing a Youtube app themselves.
That may be causing your confusing here. You weren't aware of the functionality difference that Apple prevents other platforms from using with their design choices.
I'd recommend that you research which functionality is prevented on other platforms, since you didn't seem to know about it.
That's not blocking.
A good example of blocking is not allowing any developers on a competing smart phone platform to write an app that allows users to access your monopoly internet video platform.
We are talking about iMessage.
Were you not aware of the functionality differences, cross platform?
I can totally understand if you weren't aware of them, because you had only used one type of phone, for example.
It can be hard to know about things like this, depending on ones personal experience.
Apple is pretty clearly blocking Google (or any other Android app developer) from implementing this functionality and greatly benefits from it. Particularly relevant for the age demographic this thread originally referenced.
What functionality? Give some concrete examples.
Try again.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
Sorry, but Google's proprietary closed source fork of RCS is not any kind of "standard".
> Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
This is very amusing given that Google wants to charge people to have RCS that can interoperate with their proprietary closed source implementation of RCS.
> If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has a whole sales pitch about how Google Jibe can "help carriers quickly scale RCS services, iterate in short cycles, and benefit from improvements immediately." So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
We'll see how it works out for both companies.
youtube has always worked in a web browser.
Meanwhile I'm laughing about how fast Apple would come down on Google if they made their own Android chat that tapped into iMessage and internet commentators tried to justify it by "even when Google paid to write an iMessage app themselves, Apple blocked it"
Apple doesn't have a monopoly position to abuse in when it comes to texting.
Google, on the other hand, does nave a monopoly position on internet video, and a history of using that monopoly as a weapon against competing platforms.