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Comment by RandomThoughts3 | Hacker News Reader

Nobody cares because everyone in the US weirdly uses iMessage while the rest of the world uses either WhatsApp, WeChat or Line.

Honestly, at this point, would probably be easier for Google to just push WhatsApp in the US despite it being a Meta app if they really want to break iMessage stronghold.

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Google sells RCS services, and they botched their way out of the social market. For a company which depends on ad targeting that’s pretty huge and Meta is hardly going to help their biggest competitor in advertising but the phone companies are far more negotiable.

Google don't want to "break the iMessage stronghold". They want to crack open Apple customers' messaging so they can feed it into their advertising systems. WhatsApp is useless to Google for that.

Maybe Google wants their users to have a decent, interoperable phone-base messaging solution?

They don't make any money or sell any ads via text messages with Android users, why would they suddenly with iPhone users?

Clearly Apple uses iMessage to create a significant lock in effect in the USA. So, yes, as their main competitor, Google should want to attack the market share of iMessage. It’s probably the biggest thing standing in the way of Android. Pushing a competitor with great interoperability between Android and iOS would make sense.

I mean they clearly believe that they can do that by themselves in the US market but WhatsApp has the advantage of being able to lean of expatriates and people with contacts abroad as a steppingstone.

If you really think that the only reason people use iPhones is iMessage then you are completely detached from reality.

I didn't see OP write that at all. You should also re-read the HN guidelines.

That wouldn't send a ton to data into the hands of Google.

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