asceticism 2 points 3 years ago

I gotta admit, I like the RCS features. I'm starting to think the world at large could use a messaging app switch both I phone and Android. I just want platform independent features to work seamlessly.

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Zak 4 points 3 years ago

There's no shortage of cross-platform chat apps. The hard part is getting people to use them.

In Europe, WhatsApp managed to secure market dominance; virtually everyone uses it, even people who would rather not. In the US, it seems like only iMessage has significantly displaced SMS. Google probably could have equaled that when it made Hangouts the default SMS client, but chose not to follow through.

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mr_tyler_durden 0 points 3 years ago

I do not understand why people want to go running into the arms of the carriers again for messaging. Did no one learn the lesson from SMS? Also RCS = Google, they are likely to throw it away <insert Toy Story “I don’t want to play with you anymore” meme> if they don’t see value coming from it. RCS is a dead end.

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ifitaintbroke 2 points 3 years ago

Very difficult to understand how Google has failed so badly in this space.

I mean, they not only have great tech and infrastructure, but they have some level of power and control over most of the world's phones with android - they had everything they needed to succeed.

My only guess is they have some sort of internal struggle regarding whether they even want to offer messaging/calling services at all, which is why we're presented with a often changing set of half-baked offerings. And to put the nail in the coffin, user's cottoned onto this years ago.

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mr_tyler_durden 1 point 3 years ago

You advance at Google by shipping new products. Supporting old ones doesn’t get you promoted. If you (Google) cultivate an environment that rewards people in this way you can’t be surprised by this is outcome. Platforms are left to languish and are replaced by The New Thing that does 90% (at best) of what the old platform did and has new issues/bugs but who cares? The product owner got promoted and now they are going to fuck off to a new project where they reinvent the wheel again to climb that corporate ladder. Don’t worry, in 2-3 years Google will come along with a new “No for real guys, this time we solved X problem”-chat/pay/etc product.

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DannyDeck 1 point 3 years ago

Chat has improved and works on iOS. It was awful to start with, especially as a consumer product. Switched to Signal and prefer it, other than not being able to use it on Android tablets.

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