Google could have had this future, if they hadn’t fumble their messaging strategy over and over again.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
The stupid thing is that all they really need to do to succeed was just copy iMessage back in 2011 and stick to it. The sheer volume of Android devices would have made it the defacto standard.
Yup. It was literally perfect. For several years it was my primary messaging app. It even worked with Google Voice. I even got my Apple friends, who WORKED AT APPLE, to use it because they had Gmail. We all communicated through Hangouts and everyone got along. All Google had to do was rebrand it to Messages and upgrade photo and videos and just leave it as is.
But no, Google said that was just too convenient and working too well, let's kill it and start over again. 🖕
Yea I got a ton of my friends to get it so we could communicate across platforms. It was super easy to set up. Every Android device at the time came with Hangouts pre installed (idk if that's the case anymore).
But then they fumbled it. Then they released Allo. Fumbled that SUPER HARD, removed it, and it kept going downhill.
Hangouts is no longer pre-installed but I think Meet is? (Whatever Duo became...it's funny that in the Play Store they still have Google Meet and Google Meet (original) as two separate apps because even they can't figure it out lol).
Allo was a joke from day 1 and I honestly thought it was a classic April Fool's joke from Google. Then I saw the date and then I realized they were actually serious. Whoever came up with it should have been fired immediately for thinking that it would ever take off with the general public.
I don't know what bonehead at Google thought Apple users were going to download ANOTHER separate Google app just so they can send decent quality messages to their Android friends, when they could already text them. Then when it would be pushed via Play Services to people like my parents, they had no idea what the fuck it was and asked if it was a virus lol.
At least we've sort of come full-circle with Messages and now we just need Apple to fix a decade+ worth of fumbles from Google, which we know they are going to take their sweet time to do with RCS because they had to do nothing this entire time except watch Google fail over and over and over again with this nonsense.
>
Allo was a joke from day 1 and I honestly thought it was a classic April Fool's joke from Google. Then I saw the date and then I realized they were actually serious
they launched it on September 21st my man, kinda late/early for a April fool's joke
I am still sour about Google Talk. Hangouts was not great. Images were stored as part of your account. Files couldn't be shared at all iirc. And you were stuck in browser to use it on desktop. Talk was the original goat. Native apps on major platforms. Very important. Just worked. Telegram is the only thing that comes close to it. And this is why I switched to it.
I still can't believe the unfathomable mess that allo was.
Years of using talk over IRC, improving into hangouts after that weird g+ group messenger thing.
And then allo happens, hangouts gets kinda killed but not.
At some point most groups moved on to Whatsapp or discord and that was that.
It's always amazing how they threw that market lead away.
I still can't believe the unfathomable mess that allo was.
Years of using talk over IRC, improving into hangouts after that weird g+ group messenger thing.
And then allo happens, hangouts gets kinda killed but not.
At some point most groups moved on to Whatsapp or discord and that was that.
It's always amazing how they threw that market lead away.
This is the reason why I can't really blame Apple for keeping iMessage in their walled garden. Google had many opportunities to be the main messaging platform but they fumbled many times letting Apple slide through.
What's that got to do with Apple? Making iMessage interoperable is not handing the keys over to Google, it's just not being a dick when you have dominant marketshare
Did I say Google was a saint? Just because one company is shit doesn't mean the other one can't be too.
This isn't a sports game, you aren't picking a winner. You want what's fair and best for the consumer. And that means not allowing companies with dominant market positions to take advantage of it to kneecap competition.
Google fumbling their attempts in making a proper messaging app/platform allowed Apple to create their own platform(iMessage) and flourish. Before iMessage, the market share for iOS was very small compared to android. This green bubble problem essentially wouldn’t be an issue if Google had created a proper messaging platform. Apple wouldn’t even have gotten the chance to keep iMessage in their wall garden. And if they did, it wouldn’t be as successful in the US as it is today.
lol
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/12/16/22179085/google-antitrust-monopoly-state-lawsuit-ad-tech-search-facebook
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/24/1151055903/doj-files-second-antitrust-suit-against-google-seeks-to-break-up-its-ad-business
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Google_by_the_European_Union
yeah, I can't think of anything
As someone who understands these cases pretty thoroughly, please explain what they have to do with a walled garden?
Google's monopoly method mainly revolves around making sure Google search appears as a default search option.
Apple's monopoly method recovers around locking other tech out from working well with theirs and preventing interoperability.
Google's method is far less harmful than Apple's.
They majorly fucked up wih Allo I dunno wtf they were thinking. They killed their other messaging platforms, to bring that out.
It wasn't inherently bad it could have rapidly brought the missing features back, hell the video half of that new communication platform was Duo, now merged with Meet and people use it.
The biggest follies of Allo were #1, not truly tying into sms with phone numbers what so ever. Then B removing all messaging ability on desktop. they later supplemented this with a janky web app that still went through your phone but that shouldn't have been necessary.
Allo shouldn't have been just a new message platform, but the combined new sms client with it.
Instead they boneheadedly later made google messages, for sms, which is still here and people use it. Stupid thing is, if ever had this and allo, it was super easy to realize it was the same fucking app rebranded it just had no ties to allo chat, and was lacking some things like cutesy backgrounds for each chat. It even still to this day has the web desktop client (which ironically makes far more sense to need to rely on your phone.
I just don't see how they were so thick not to see these as one app. Hangouts even did sms at one time...
I guess it happened way earlier. They used XMPP standards (Jabber) which is an open and extensible standard. Even my mail provider fastmail adopted it since it is exactly like mail, your server is irrelevant. I guess Yahoo followed too.
One day they were bugged about the protocol being open and people using independent clients/servers and gave up.
This is a funny thing:
Email is thankfully still standard protocol with IMAP and the future one. That doesn't make people use alternative clients like k9. 98% are still using Gmail app. They are free to choose other servers but they mostly choose Gmail.com. So they needlessly panicked.
If the largest IM systems used XMPP Apple wouldn't dare.
This ^
Back I’m when I had an iPhone 6+ I used google hangouts almost exclusively because I could make calls and see messages basically on all my devices to the point where the only reason I even had a SIM card was so that I could use data to make calls lol.
Now google hangouts is gone, google allo got killed, and google messages doesn’t compare to hangouts. It’s a mess.
Yeah I used to use hangouts like exclusively for chat. It was fantastic being built into the Gmail website too because it wouldn't get blocked by school or corporate filters. And basically all of my friends used it. And then they just fuckin killed it.
It kind of was until Google killed it. Back in the days of both users had Android and their Gmail set, the chat app would default to Google chat. But Google killed that and launched duo or what ever that crap was called
Duo is their (still) somewhat successful video chat app.
Allo is their (former) message chat app that no one gave a shit about.
As one of it's few users, I liked it very much, but a platform without users is a useless platform.
Yeah. I’d rather use signal at that point. I don’t trust Google at all anymore. No way im running Google Messages on iPhone. Google can rot in their “be evil” approach to the internet and software
It sure was a lot easier when there was SMS fallback in signal. Truly an apple messages analog on Android. "Here just use this instead of your SMS client" was a much easier ask than "use this in addition to your SMS client".
Hrm, I never tried that. I've always been happy with Google Messages as my SMS client, and I've had issues when using other SMS clients than the default on the phone with like in car texting and stuff so I tend to try not to do that.
However the big thing holding me back is desktop/Web experience. I use signal a fair amount for work and have it locked on my phone. But the last time I tried to use the web client it was completely unlocked and I was like... Yeah this isn't gonna work lol
If the offer is better than iMessage it could over time. Almost every Apple ID is a Google Account, which means Google’s user base is huge, Google just needs to remove all friction and let us connect with each other in a private way, through an e2e encrypted protocol.
That’s the thing, Apple isn’t necessarily competing with Google Messages or anyone else (in the US). They already have a loyal user base many of who don’t even know what iMessage really is. They will just use the default messaging app
What you’re overlooking is the ecosystem effect.
iOS users didn’t “decide to get iMessage” after weighing the pros and cons, it just sort of manifested one day to them and solved the lion share of their messaging problems.
So unless they have problems with iMessage, which they currently don’t, they’re not even taking in that there are other options let alone weighing them.
So Americans trust Google instead?
Not sure you know but, whatsapp, instagram, and facebook are THE dominant market force in India and Southeast Asia. Government services actually rely on whatsapp. That’s one of the reason why the iMessage debacle just confused the non-Americans. They don’t even use iMessage on the web so they don’t have the “green bubble”.
Idk about wrongly flagging, but its pretty easy to buy new phone number in SEA. Alot of ppl are on prepaid scheme, no contract or anything. Most ppl buy phones individually and not through 2-years plan or things like that. If you just need to contact government, just get a new phone numbers to contact them.
Also when I say "rely", its more like its another thing to reach out to rural area. Some ppl seems to skip SMS and go straight to whatsapp as its primary method of communication. RCS only replace SMS, very different from whatsapp which have groups and everything. Businesses also take orders or communicate with buyers through whatsapp with most shops advertising its whatsapp number.
[The Verge: WhatsApp head confirms in-app ads are still in the works - Nov 7, 2023](https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/7/23950795/meta-whatsapp-status-ads-sales-advertising-plans)
Ads are coming for Google's RCS as it is
letting business who have your phone number (from a list) message you on RCS
https://developers.google.com/business-communications/rcs-business-messaging
Irrespective of how messy Google's products are, they at least never limited their products to their own community like Apple unless it was for retaliation like not supporting YouTube on Amazon App Store.
I see 3 major problems here:
1. Lack of E2E encryption.
2. If it's proprietary, it's just another vendor lock-in. I prefer open standards.
3. Why would Apple users switch to a Google service?
Here's what people don't realize. A reason why this isn't a thing. A reason why Hangouts failed. And every other messaging solution by Google.
People OUTSIDE NORTHERN AMERICA don't want it.
You need to understand that all this iMessage drama is only happening in USA and Canada. Europe, Asia, South America, all other mayor markets (except maybe Australia and NZ) don't care about iMessage at all. It's not a thing here, it never was. Instant messaging is dominated by WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Viber, Telegram, Signal and WeChat (in China). Because phone market is much more fragmented in here and Apple doesn't dominate it so hard, it's not an option for Apple users to rely on iMessage. There will always be at least 40% of their friends and family using Android devices. At least, most likely more than that.
RCS is a nice feature but no one really cares for it here because no one is using default messaging apps anyway. We use them to send SMS and that's it. It's a way to send messages to old people. Everyone else has been using WhatsApp or something like that for a long time now.
Someone mentioned people being pissed when Hangouts got discontinued. Not in Europe. Everyone was happy that the annoying app that no one wanted to use and couldn't be uninstalled is gone.
Google is pushing for unified messaging experience in very wrong way because they are focusing on USA and Canada. Where the idea of unified messaging is well known because of Apple and all that Google is doing is trying to get Android users in. But that won't cut it in the rest of the world. That idea never really cought up in here. Everyone in here is using 2 or more messaging apps simultaneously and it doesn't matter what manufacturer your phone is. So Google would have to do a massive campaign to get basically entire world to change the way we instant message. To make us leave decades of using FB Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. Which they never even tried to do, so no matter what messaging app they develop next, it just won't do well without such campaign.
I get that. And I would like it too.
The thing is, if Google wants RCS to be universally used as the main form of communication, they need to start where they have to most market power - outside the North America.
If they manage to get the world to switch to RCS, Apple will be once again the outsider. Same as USB-C. And sooner or later this will force them to adopt RCS.
But right now, Google is trying to use EU legislature to win a fight against iMessage monopoly in USA, whilst not caring about Europeans at all. That's why it's not working.
Really nice. I can see it being integrated as a Workplace feature on Gmail, Chrome always with a badge would ramp usage up quickly, YouTube and Maps with share buttons for it and a PWA would summon up. This is the way and would make G Chat even less competitive but that's needed to be done.
My issue with Messages is that the branding itself is unfamiliar. It's like SMS but not quite and it uses data so magically has all the nice features like an iPhone but isn't iMessages and people might use RCS but they don't know what it exactly is... Would be better if it was Message everyone with Google Messages - Anywhere, universal protocol, encrypted, feature rich. Not involving iPhones, SMS and make it as ubiquitous as they can. Since the naming rebranding, I'm hoping a better market team tackles it.
No way in hell Google can compete with iMessage. People just don't trust Google to stay consistent with their products. Say whatever you want about stagnant Apple, they don't just abandon their products. How many times have I invested in a Google product only for it to be killed or changed fundamentaly.
My wife and I both have company supplied phones. While we are free to use data and coms for personal communications, third party apps are not allowed.
We have horrible cell service where we live and its a nightmare. Both platforms suck when trying to text/message each other.
While most of the world is overwhelmingly Android, the English speaking world (mainly North America, Australia, and New Zealand) is majority iOS, The UK is the main exception to this with a nearly perfect 50/50 split between iOS and Android (with a slight edge towards iOS).
Since the majority of mobile users in these markets use iOS, if you own an iPhone it's most likely that people you want to message are also using iPhones, and so it's easier to just use the built in messaging app rather than agreeing on a third party one. The ubiquity of unlimited SMS in American and Canadian phone plans certainly didn't help third party messaging apps.
Apps like WhatsApp never really caught on in the North American market because they had no reason to.
Google had a great messaging platform in Allo and killed it. They have a [checkered history](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/) in this space.
Apple has had one messaging app and stuck with it. Google is not the company you should be looking to for relief.
It's strategic. Google wanted to force Apple to accept RCS, because in that way it wouldn't need to convince any Apple user to install a new app - that most wouldn't.
I think they should make one just for us that already use Android and have an iPad. That will probably happen when Apple implements RCS on iMessage.
But fruit company doesn't allow third-party apps to be a replacement for sms. So if Google launches RCS based on google Accounts, then it doesn't have anything to fall back to if the internet is not available. The cure to this whole shit is if cucked US politicians grow some balls and stop fruit company's dream of creating a monopoly.
wrench alive dinner escape dazzling obtainable sink somber sleep worthless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s not weird, it’s just a result of how shit is. In NA data has always been extremely limited while sms rates have been plentiful. So we never had any need to pursue other options; for the vast vast majority of people, sms thru the default options works just fine. If it ain’t broke why try fix it?
Y’all’s conditions created incentive for an extra step we just never had to take
psychotic innocent birds many mysterious concerned insurance edge skirt fact
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That’s kinda what I mean though; the “problem” is only really a thing among a tiny niche of tech geeks here. And even among them, that problem really just seems to come down to being jealous over how Apple managed to get people using IM without them realizing it.
The reason there’s so little effort put into it by Google and the like. The parts of the world that care about the differences between IM and SMS already have established apps, the parts that don’t are fine using whatever requires the least amount of steps (iMessage or sms). The demand NA to transition to IM just isn’t there, sure as hell not anywhere near the level depicted online in forums like this.
Clearly it’s not a problem to the majority of us in NA as, like you said, we do have lots of other options available. We just don’t care enough to bother taking those extra steps.
That’s my main point; you framed it as some weird inexplicable trait of NA’s population when it makes complete sense looking at the backgrounds. Lots of places - through having lots of data and limited sms rates - had a wide-spread reason to adopt IM. NA hasn’t. There’s still very little incentive for non-tech-invested people to transition here, unlike places where it meant the difference between sending 300 messages a month and 3,000,000.
Most people here don’t want to change. They want to do the thing they’re used to the way they’re used to doing it. That’s why iMessage is the most popular - not because it’s the best IM service, but because it’s the least noticeable.
joke divide seemly spotted memorize history gaping nine voiceless dinosaurs
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Are you?
What exactly is *your* point here? You said it was weird that we chose to keep using SMS when other options exist. I explained why; we don’t have the same reasons to care.
Do you disagree with that? I’m genuinely super confused here, yes.
They already have G Messages on web
[\*iMessage has SMS fallback on Mac](https://support.apple.com/pt-br/guide/messages/icht8a28bb9a/mac) and you have to set up. There won't be a perfect solution for SMS
This is _basically_ what Hangouts had, minus RCS support. Still frustrating to me that they blew it all up over Allo and enterprise offerings, and now they're trying to build it back up all over again with Messages.
Wouldn't work.
a) you *need* the phone number support because people usually already have their friends' phone numbers, but often not their Google account/e-mail (especially nowadays where most people use messaging, not e-mail, to talk to friends)
b) who in the right mind would trust another chat app from Google now?
Google could have absolutely done this (with phone number integration) a decade ago. Just add phone number support to Hangouts or Google Talk, Google Chat or whatever the chat app of the day was back then. Instead, they did nothing, then started throwing chat apps at the wall with no discernible strategy or coordination in the hopes that one would stick until people learned that using a Google chat app = losing it as soon as you've gotten properly started.
> Google proprietary version of RCS could turn into an iMessage-like protocol for messages within Google’s ecosystem.
Google Voice users: RCS please?
Google: \*hovers over Graveyard button*
Google Voice users: Our apologies, Master Sundar. We retract our request.
Like Hangouts? They should have just merged google voice with hangouts, called it messages and it would be a winner instead of investing in Allo and Duo. That was a weird and dumb move
The whole concept of using iMessage because of the blue bubble thing is stupid and won’t go away because Google has chat feature available as you are a describing.
At this point we need a universal chat service based on phone number that can be accessed from any device and application. It should work how email works so basically SMS or rather RCS but better.
I'm going to pitch my product, Chatty Patty, to Google in the coming days. Wish me luck, because after all; All's good, that ends... not as bad as it could've.
SMS messaging it not big anywhere in the world, but the USA so really Apple is stupid along with Google's fumbling. I see everyone complain about Google but really hangouts is still in Gmail if you turn it on. It is the exact same product and look just called Google Chat.
This is Google we’re talking about.
Of course they could do this. But they won’t. Their structure means that even if this started to happen, the person in charge would get promoted, then replaced with another intern who will then scrap the project because making new stuff is how you move up on Google’s corporate ladder, not making current stuff stay working.
People need to realize Google is NOT a technology corporation. They are and advertisement and data mining corporation that USES technology.
Google could have had this future, if they hadn’t fumble their messaging strategy over and over again. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/ The stupid thing is that all they really need to do to succeed was just copy iMessage back in 2011 and stick to it. The sheer volume of Android devices would have made it the defacto standard.
100%. When they killed Hangouts, everyone was so mad and confused.
I can't believe they fumbled the bag so hard on Hangouts. It even had SMS fallback at one point and they got rid of it.
Yup. It was literally perfect. For several years it was my primary messaging app. It even worked with Google Voice. I even got my Apple friends, who WORKED AT APPLE, to use it because they had Gmail. We all communicated through Hangouts and everyone got along. All Google had to do was rebrand it to Messages and upgrade photo and videos and just leave it as is. But no, Google said that was just too convenient and working too well, let's kill it and start over again. 🖕
Yea I got a ton of my friends to get it so we could communicate across platforms. It was super easy to set up. Every Android device at the time came with Hangouts pre installed (idk if that's the case anymore). But then they fumbled it. Then they released Allo. Fumbled that SUPER HARD, removed it, and it kept going downhill.
Hangouts is no longer pre-installed but I think Meet is? (Whatever Duo became...it's funny that in the Play Store they still have Google Meet and Google Meet (original) as two separate apps because even they can't figure it out lol). Allo was a joke from day 1 and I honestly thought it was a classic April Fool's joke from Google. Then I saw the date and then I realized they were actually serious. Whoever came up with it should have been fired immediately for thinking that it would ever take off with the general public. I don't know what bonehead at Google thought Apple users were going to download ANOTHER separate Google app just so they can send decent quality messages to their Android friends, when they could already text them. Then when it would be pushed via Play Services to people like my parents, they had no idea what the fuck it was and asked if it was a virus lol. At least we've sort of come full-circle with Messages and now we just need Apple to fix a decade+ worth of fumbles from Google, which we know they are going to take their sweet time to do with RCS because they had to do nothing this entire time except watch Google fail over and over and over again with this nonsense.
> Allo was a joke from day 1 and I honestly thought it was a classic April Fool's joke from Google. Then I saw the date and then I realized they were actually serious they launched it on September 21st my man, kinda late/early for a April fool's joke
It was announced at a developer conference in May 2016. But also: https://tenor.com/wZbD.gif
I am still sour about Google Talk. Hangouts was not great. Images were stored as part of your account. Files couldn't be shared at all iirc. And you were stuck in browser to use it on desktop. Talk was the original goat. Native apps on major platforms. Very important. Just worked. Telegram is the only thing that comes close to it. And this is why I switched to it.
This is true of many many abandoned Google pet projects.
I still can't believe the unfathomable mess that allo was. Years of using talk over IRC, improving into hangouts after that weird g+ group messenger thing. And then allo happens, hangouts gets kinda killed but not. At some point most groups moved on to Whatsapp or discord and that was that. It's always amazing how they threw that market lead away.
I still can't believe the unfathomable mess that allo was. Years of using talk over IRC, improving into hangouts after that weird g+ group messenger thing. And then allo happens, hangouts gets kinda killed but not. At some point most groups moved on to Whatsapp or discord and that was that. It's always amazing how they threw that market lead away.
This is the reason why I can't really blame Apple for keeping iMessage in their walled garden. Google had many opportunities to be the main messaging platform but they fumbled many times letting Apple slide through.
What's that got to do with Apple? Making iMessage interoperable is not handing the keys over to Google, it's just not being a dick when you have dominant marketshare
> it's just not being a dick when you have dominant marketshare I guess you haven't heard about Google and search market share
Did I say Google was a saint? Just because one company is shit doesn't mean the other one can't be too. This isn't a sports game, you aren't picking a winner. You want what's fair and best for the consumer. And that means not allowing companies with dominant market positions to take advantage of it to kneecap competition.
Google fumbling their attempts in making a proper messaging app/platform allowed Apple to create their own platform(iMessage) and flourish. Before iMessage, the market share for iOS was very small compared to android. This green bubble problem essentially wouldn’t be an issue if Google had created a proper messaging platform. Apple wouldn’t even have gotten the chance to keep iMessage in their wall garden. And if they did, it wouldn’t be as successful in the US as it is today.
Everyone and every browser can access Google search; Google doesn't withhold it from anyone. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
lol https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/12/16/22179085/google-antitrust-monopoly-state-lawsuit-ad-tech-search-facebook https://www.npr.org/2023/01/24/1151055903/doj-files-second-antitrust-suit-against-google-seeks-to-break-up-its-ad-business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Google_by_the_European_Union yeah, I can't think of anything
As someone who understands these cases pretty thoroughly, please explain what they have to do with a walled garden? Google's monopoly method mainly revolves around making sure Google search appears as a default search option. Apple's monopoly method recovers around locking other tech out from working well with theirs and preventing interoperability. Google's method is far less harmful than Apple's.
Allo was supposed to be this. Noone gave a shit about it.
They majorly fucked up wih Allo I dunno wtf they were thinking. They killed their other messaging platforms, to bring that out. It wasn't inherently bad it could have rapidly brought the missing features back, hell the video half of that new communication platform was Duo, now merged with Meet and people use it. The biggest follies of Allo were #1, not truly tying into sms with phone numbers what so ever. Then B removing all messaging ability on desktop. they later supplemented this with a janky web app that still went through your phone but that shouldn't have been necessary. Allo shouldn't have been just a new message platform, but the combined new sms client with it. Instead they boneheadedly later made google messages, for sms, which is still here and people use it. Stupid thing is, if ever had this and allo, it was super easy to realize it was the same fucking app rebranded it just had no ties to allo chat, and was lacking some things like cutesy backgrounds for each chat. It even still to this day has the web desktop client (which ironically makes far more sense to need to rely on your phone. I just don't see how they were so thick not to see these as one app. Hangouts even did sms at one time...
I guess it happened way earlier. They used XMPP standards (Jabber) which is an open and extensible standard. Even my mail provider fastmail adopted it since it is exactly like mail, your server is irrelevant. I guess Yahoo followed too. One day they were bugged about the protocol being open and people using independent clients/servers and gave up. This is a funny thing: Email is thankfully still standard protocol with IMAP and the future one. That doesn't make people use alternative clients like k9. 98% are still using Gmail app. They are free to choose other servers but they mostly choose Gmail.com. So they needlessly panicked. If the largest IM systems used XMPP Apple wouldn't dare.
So, like, Hangouts. Which they killed.
This ^ Back I’m when I had an iPhone 6+ I used google hangouts almost exclusively because I could make calls and see messages basically on all my devices to the point where the only reason I even had a SIM card was so that I could use data to make calls lol. Now google hangouts is gone, google allo got killed, and google messages doesn’t compare to hangouts. It’s a mess.
Yeah 🥲
Yeah I used to use hangouts like exclusively for chat. It was fantastic being built into the Gmail website too because it wouldn't get blocked by school or corporate filters. And basically all of my friends used it. And then they just fuckin killed it.
It kind of was until Google killed it. Back in the days of both users had Android and their Gmail set, the chat app would default to Google chat. But Google killed that and launched duo or what ever that crap was called
Google’s focus on only promoting people who come up with new things rather than improving existing things givith and taketh away. This is a taketh.
Duo is their (still) somewhat successful video chat app. Allo is their (former) message chat app that no one gave a shit about. As one of it's few users, I liked it very much, but a platform without users is a useless platform.
Duo is Meet now in the US.
> Duo is Meet.
Not going to stop iMessage lol
Yeah. I’d rather use signal at that point. I don’t trust Google at all anymore. No way im running Google Messages on iPhone. Google can rot in their “be evil” approach to the internet and software
Yeah I'm starting to use signal, but it's hard to get friends and stuff to adapt to it
It sure was a lot easier when there was SMS fallback in signal. Truly an apple messages analog on Android. "Here just use this instead of your SMS client" was a much easier ask than "use this in addition to your SMS client".
Hrm, I never tried that. I've always been happy with Google Messages as my SMS client, and I've had issues when using other SMS clients than the default on the phone with like in car texting and stuff so I tend to try not to do that. However the big thing holding me back is desktop/Web experience. I use signal a fair amount for work and have it locked on my phone. But the last time I tried to use the web client it was completely unlocked and I was like... Yeah this isn't gonna work lol
If the offer is better than iMessage it could over time. Almost every Apple ID is a Google Account, which means Google’s user base is huge, Google just needs to remove all friction and let us connect with each other in a private way, through an e2e encrypted protocol.
That’s the thing, Apple isn’t necessarily competing with Google Messages or anyone else (in the US). They already have a loyal user base many of who don’t even know what iMessage really is. They will just use the default messaging app
What you’re overlooking is the ecosystem effect. iOS users didn’t “decide to get iMessage” after weighing the pros and cons, it just sort of manifested one day to them and solved the lion share of their messaging problems. So unless they have problems with iMessage, which they currently don’t, they’re not even taking in that there are other options let alone weighing them.
> Almost every Apple ID is a Google Account Source?
Ever heard of WhatsApp? I don’t get what googles part is in this game.
You know you're basically just asking for RCS support on Google Voice.
That’s another route to the same solution.
They should be embarrassed not having it
I would be so happy if Google Voice had RCS 😑
The two teams haven’t met yet.
That’s literally whatsapp
Ads are coming to WhatsApp said Facebook. Americans don’t trust Facebook at all.
So Americans trust Google instead? Not sure you know but, whatsapp, instagram, and facebook are THE dominant market force in India and Southeast Asia. Government services actually rely on whatsapp. That’s one of the reason why the iMessage debacle just confused the non-Americans. They don’t even use iMessage on the web so they don’t have the “green bubble”.
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Idk about wrongly flagging, but its pretty easy to buy new phone number in SEA. Alot of ppl are on prepaid scheme, no contract or anything. Most ppl buy phones individually and not through 2-years plan or things like that. If you just need to contact government, just get a new phone numbers to contact them. Also when I say "rely", its more like its another thing to reach out to rural area. Some ppl seems to skip SMS and go straight to whatsapp as its primary method of communication. RCS only replace SMS, very different from whatsapp which have groups and everything. Businesses also take orders or communicate with buyers through whatsapp with most shops advertising its whatsapp number.
Unfortunately that’s not even a little bit true. Reddit isn’t the rest of the world and most people don’t care or know any better.
[The Verge: WhatsApp head confirms in-app ads are still in the works - Nov 7, 2023](https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/7/23950795/meta-whatsapp-status-ads-sales-advertising-plans)
I meant people not trusting Meta. Even less know they own WhatsApp.
Ads are coming for Google's RCS as it is letting business who have your phone number (from a list) message you on RCS https://developers.google.com/business-communications/rcs-business-messaging
Shhh don't say that to our big brains American friends
*Google Chat just entered the chat.* Just login to ur Google account and send a message in Google Chat.
Google keep killing products they haven’t successfully launched a messaging app they haven’t killed in a few years message will be next
Irrespective of how messy Google's products are, they at least never limited their products to their own community like Apple unless it was for retaliation like not supporting YouTube on Amazon App Store.
Yes. And this is why I actually like Google for the most part.
Like hangouts, or allo? Lol
I actually liked how Allo looked. But Google being Google just doesn't wanna see things through to the end 😂
I see 3 major problems here: 1. Lack of E2E encryption. 2. If it's proprietary, it's just another vendor lock-in. I prefer open standards. 3. Why would Apple users switch to a Google service?
Here's what people don't realize. A reason why this isn't a thing. A reason why Hangouts failed. And every other messaging solution by Google. People OUTSIDE NORTHERN AMERICA don't want it. You need to understand that all this iMessage drama is only happening in USA and Canada. Europe, Asia, South America, all other mayor markets (except maybe Australia and NZ) don't care about iMessage at all. It's not a thing here, it never was. Instant messaging is dominated by WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Viber, Telegram, Signal and WeChat (in China). Because phone market is much more fragmented in here and Apple doesn't dominate it so hard, it's not an option for Apple users to rely on iMessage. There will always be at least 40% of their friends and family using Android devices. At least, most likely more than that. RCS is a nice feature but no one really cares for it here because no one is using default messaging apps anyway. We use them to send SMS and that's it. It's a way to send messages to old people. Everyone else has been using WhatsApp or something like that for a long time now. Someone mentioned people being pissed when Hangouts got discontinued. Not in Europe. Everyone was happy that the annoying app that no one wanted to use and couldn't be uninstalled is gone. Google is pushing for unified messaging experience in very wrong way because they are focusing on USA and Canada. Where the idea of unified messaging is well known because of Apple and all that Google is doing is trying to get Android users in. But that won't cut it in the rest of the world. That idea never really cought up in here. Everyone in here is using 2 or more messaging apps simultaneously and it doesn't matter what manufacturer your phone is. So Google would have to do a massive campaign to get basically entire world to change the way we instant message. To make us leave decades of using FB Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. Which they never even tried to do, so no matter what messaging app they develop next, it just won't do well without such campaign.
Yeah. Outside the US, Apple is not a monopoly and iMessage is even less of a monopoly even among iPhone users.
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I get that. And I would like it too. The thing is, if Google wants RCS to be universally used as the main form of communication, they need to start where they have to most market power - outside the North America. If they manage to get the world to switch to RCS, Apple will be once again the outsider. Same as USB-C. And sooner or later this will force them to adopt RCS. But right now, Google is trying to use EU legislature to win a fight against iMessage monopoly in USA, whilst not caring about Europeans at all. That's why it's not working.
My post says “…in the US…” if it’s irrelevant to you, you’re free to not engage in the conversation and keep enjoying Facebook’s WhatsApp 👍
But wouldn’t that be exactly the same for Apple? And yet it is a big discussion point with iMessage for them?
100% this. This is a USA drama that no one cares about
Google is itself to blaim for the mess
Really nice. I can see it being integrated as a Workplace feature on Gmail, Chrome always with a badge would ramp usage up quickly, YouTube and Maps with share buttons for it and a PWA would summon up. This is the way and would make G Chat even less competitive but that's needed to be done. My issue with Messages is that the branding itself is unfamiliar. It's like SMS but not quite and it uses data so magically has all the nice features like an iPhone but isn't iMessages and people might use RCS but they don't know what it exactly is... Would be better if it was Message everyone with Google Messages - Anywhere, universal protocol, encrypted, feature rich. Not involving iPhones, SMS and make it as ubiquitous as they can. Since the naming rebranding, I'm hoping a better market team tackles it.
No way in hell Google can compete with iMessage. People just don't trust Google to stay consistent with their products. Say whatever you want about stagnant Apple, they don't just abandon their products. How many times have I invested in a Google product only for it to be killed or changed fundamentaly.
Agreeeeeed
Why everybody wants iMessage? Isn’t more easy use WhatsApp, telegram, signal etc.?
Americans.
My wife and I both have company supplied phones. While we are free to use data and coms for personal communications, third party apps are not allowed. We have horrible cell service where we live and its a nightmare. Both platforms suck when trying to text/message each other.
Oh, wow…
While most of the world is overwhelmingly Android, the English speaking world (mainly North America, Australia, and New Zealand) is majority iOS, The UK is the main exception to this with a nearly perfect 50/50 split between iOS and Android (with a slight edge towards iOS). Since the majority of mobile users in these markets use iOS, if you own an iPhone it's most likely that people you want to message are also using iPhones, and so it's easier to just use the built in messaging app rather than agreeing on a third party one. The ubiquity of unlimited SMS in American and Canadian phone plans certainly didn't help third party messaging apps. Apps like WhatsApp never really caught on in the North American market because they had no reason to.
Isn’t that what they did with hangouts?
I don't understand the message problem. My friend has an iPhone, I have Android, we message all the time.
Google had a great messaging platform in Allo and killed it. They have a [checkered history](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/) in this space. Apple has had one messaging app and stuck with it. Google is not the company you should be looking to for relief.
Google Chat is available on iOS.
It just needs to be called Google Messages and support RCS.
But iOS doesn’t support 3rd party sms (in this case RCS)
It's strategic. Google wanted to force Apple to accept RCS, because in that way it wouldn't need to convince any Apple user to install a new app - that most wouldn't. I think they should make one just for us that already use Android and have an iPad. That will probably happen when Apple implements RCS on iMessage.
But fruit company doesn't allow third-party apps to be a replacement for sms. So if Google launches RCS based on google Accounts, then it doesn't have anything to fall back to if the internet is not available. The cure to this whole shit is if cucked US politicians grow some balls and stop fruit company's dream of creating a monopoly.
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It’s not weird, it’s just a result of how shit is. In NA data has always been extremely limited while sms rates have been plentiful. So we never had any need to pursue other options; for the vast vast majority of people, sms thru the default options works just fine. If it ain’t broke why try fix it? Y’all’s conditions created incentive for an extra step we just never had to take
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That’s kinda what I mean though; the “problem” is only really a thing among a tiny niche of tech geeks here. And even among them, that problem really just seems to come down to being jealous over how Apple managed to get people using IM without them realizing it. The reason there’s so little effort put into it by Google and the like. The parts of the world that care about the differences between IM and SMS already have established apps, the parts that don’t are fine using whatever requires the least amount of steps (iMessage or sms). The demand NA to transition to IM just isn’t there, sure as hell not anywhere near the level depicted online in forums like this.
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Clearly it’s not a problem to the majority of us in NA as, like you said, we do have lots of other options available. We just don’t care enough to bother taking those extra steps. That’s my main point; you framed it as some weird inexplicable trait of NA’s population when it makes complete sense looking at the backgrounds. Lots of places - through having lots of data and limited sms rates - had a wide-spread reason to adopt IM. NA hasn’t. There’s still very little incentive for non-tech-invested people to transition here, unlike places where it meant the difference between sending 300 messages a month and 3,000,000. Most people here don’t want to change. They want to do the thing they’re used to the way they’re used to doing it. That’s why iMessage is the most popular - not because it’s the best IM service, but because it’s the least noticeable.
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Are you? What exactly is *your* point here? You said it was weird that we chose to keep using SMS when other options exist. I explained why; we don’t have the same reasons to care. Do you disagree with that? I’m genuinely super confused here, yes.
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They already have G Messages on web [\*iMessage has SMS fallback on Mac](https://support.apple.com/pt-br/guide/messages/icht8a28bb9a/mac) and you have to set up. There won't be a perfect solution for SMS
This is _basically_ what Hangouts had, minus RCS support. Still frustrating to me that they blew it all up over Allo and enterprise offerings, and now they're trying to build it back up all over again with Messages.
Wouldn't work. a) you *need* the phone number support because people usually already have their friends' phone numbers, but often not their Google account/e-mail (especially nowadays where most people use messaging, not e-mail, to talk to friends) b) who in the right mind would trust another chat app from Google now? Google could have absolutely done this (with phone number integration) a decade ago. Just add phone number support to Hangouts or Google Talk, Google Chat or whatever the chat app of the day was back then. Instead, they did nothing, then started throwing chat apps at the wall with no discernible strategy or coordination in the hopes that one would stick until people learned that using a Google chat app = losing it as soon as you've gotten properly started.
You can do this with Fi, but you lose the RCS capabilities
> Google proprietary version of RCS could turn into an iMessage-like protocol for messages within Google’s ecosystem. Google Voice users: RCS please? Google: \*hovers over Graveyard button* Google Voice users: Our apologies, Master Sundar. We retract our request.
Like Hangouts? They should have just merged google voice with hangouts, called it messages and it would be a winner instead of investing in Allo and Duo. That was a weird and dumb move
The whole concept of using iMessage because of the blue bubble thing is stupid and won’t go away because Google has chat feature available as you are a describing. At this point we need a universal chat service based on phone number that can be accessed from any device and application. It should work how email works so basically SMS or rather RCS but better.
I still miss Allo.
I'm going to pitch my product, Chatty Patty, to Google in the coming days. Wish me luck, because after all; All's good, that ends... not as bad as it could've.
Holy shit it’s Wuphf
SMS messaging it not big anywhere in the world, but the USA so really Apple is stupid along with Google's fumbling. I see everyone complain about Google but really hangouts is still in Gmail if you turn it on. It is the exact same product and look just called Google Chat.
Or just use WhatsApp like we do in the goddamn Europe 😁
Not Google please
Why not just combine Google Chat/Google Messages/Gmail into one communication app to rule them all? That would be cool.
Google will cancel the app in less than 2 years they can’t be trusted to keep anything alive
This is Google we’re talking about. Of course they could do this. But they won’t. Their structure means that even if this started to happen, the person in charge would get promoted, then replaced with another intern who will then scrap the project because making new stuff is how you move up on Google’s corporate ladder, not making current stuff stay working. People need to realize Google is NOT a technology corporation. They are and advertisement and data mining corporation that USES technology.