Using a telephone number is impractical? That's our identity in the third world. I think they are focused on the developing world in this.

Some of the people here are in a bubble. There are billions of people in the 3rd world countries who are now coming online and they will never have a GMail account in their life. But they will have a Facebook account and they will have Whatsapp. So many of my relatives started using internet after Jio made it so cheap and none of them use Hangouts, Allo, GMail to communicate. But everyone is on Whatsapp and everyone has a Facebook profile.

Disc: Googler, but this knowledge is my own as I grew up in India.

None of that disproves his point. Google Talk could have been WhatsApp, very easily. They were in a position to make it happen before WhatsApp had even started development - Google Talk had enjoyed a meteoric rise and dominance over the messaging market for 4 years before WhatsApp came out, and it took WhatsApp quite a bit of time past 2009 to gain the steam it did.

The fact that they failed to capitalize on it is what has allowed WhatsApp and others to become as big as they have. If Google hadn't messed it up, everyone would be using Google Talk, even in the 3rd world.

Exactly. GMail did not have to be the only way to access Talk. It could have allowed parallel identity schemes easily for phone-number based login.

You live in a bubble, but your bubble is different from their bubble. Thank you for being kind enough to share what you leaned growing up. It helps us all see past our own bubbles.

I am from a rural part of India and everybody has a Jio phone and everybody is on WhatsApp and Facebook. Most of them don't even know what is email and I don't know anyone who uses email or any other chat service other maybe Hike in rare cases. I was surprised since they already have Facebook and it would have required an email.

I often get disapproving looks when they realise I am not on Facebook :)

Users can sign up on Facebook with phone number only. Most users in rural parts are signing up on Facebook through phone no. only.

What if the user is on a WiFi-only tablet, or laptop, or desktop PC? What if the user is at an Internet cafe? What if the phone user has no cellular signal but has WiFi access?

Clearly it would be a mistake to limit this to just phone users.

I'm from China where WeChat dominates everything and SMS are nothing but to receive verification codes. Almost everyone here use WeChat as their contact and Contacts.app is merely opened no more than once a month. This phenomenon is common from giant cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, which are at least as developed as NYC or SF, to small cities in the rest part of the vast country, which are absolutely 3rd or even 4th world.

I agree with your point that in some countries people don't use Email and that's the face in China as well. But people use phone numbers just for register other services, as the online identity. We don't use SMS, and we prefer WeChat Audio over phone calls when it's available.

I think you really need to check how people use Internet in India, Indonesia and other Asian/African countries. I doubt anyone uses laptop or desktop PC unless it's needed for work. And Internet cafe is a thing of the past.

Having wifi but no cellular signal is such a rare usecase.

What I'm saying is that telephone number as ID is fine, but non-telephone number as ID should be supported, too.

They should be trying to include everyone, telephone and non-telephone users alike.

I am from the same place and what what_ever is trying to say, I think, is that in these places mobile number is pretty much the identity and username and emails are largely irrelevant for the majority and when I say that majority that's like overwhelming majority and they are coming online for the first and they really don't have time or any interest to learn about email and messaging protocols.

For example, we recently launched UPI payments - that's like a banking address sort of thing (you can send from it and request too) and you usually get your UPI address like this "9876543210@upi". The number part is simply the 10 digit mobile number and that's it.

But those things don't sell here. Maybe businesses and professionals buy it but not regular folk. All of them are buying smartphones in millions and going online everyday. Cellular signal is the norm all over the country and we have around 80% of it as villages. So I'm pretty sure all of those use cases come at a distant second. Please read about the impact of Jio in India.

> Please read about the impact of Jio in India.

I read this piece [1] which centers on Jios impact on the telecom industry. It states that the rate of digitalization has been boosted, but doesn't really detail the societal impact. Do you recommend any particular article?

[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/3f1fe4d6-e4e0-11e7-a685-5634466a6...

I don't live in the third world, and I don't think any new messaging service should focus on that limited use case. I'm pretty sure Google focused on India with Allo, but what's the point of focusing on one market when you're a global internet giant? I mainly use Hangouts for messaging, because I use the "desktop client" (Chrome extension) more than the mobile app.

It would be possible to let people use both phone number and e-mail, that way I can log in on computers or my phone with a temporary SIM card while I'm traveling, and people in the developing world doesn't need to get an e-mail account.

Please understand that the size of the population which uses this limited use case in my country is greater than multiple western countries' populations combined. I've been a developer for nearly 7 years and make a good amount of money in my country. Yet I've never touched an airplane. I'm telling this to point out the difference in living styles between the two zones of earth. All tech companies are rushing to capture market in the developing countries because we are poor now but in 20 years we may well be up there along with you all.

Wow. That's surprising. I am from north India - based in Bangalore - and I fly almost every other month.

Are you from a remote/small town or like tier 2-3 city? Freelancing maybe? As for the questions - it just got me curious.

250kms from Bangalore. Road is like 4 hrs journey and I live in HSR. So considering the journey to airport and everything road is cheaper and takes almost the same time.

Also flights are cheaper only nowadays. It used to be unreasonable.

Aah.. makes sense. And indeed flights were ridiculously unreasonable even 1.5 yrs ago or so.

Because GSM is everywhere whereas IP connectivity is spotty?

To be fair, Allo only came after Google had killed several other chat implementations because for some reason they couldn’t tolerate the idea that GChat was successful.

> but nobody around here uses SMS or MMS for person to person contact

Where are you located?

Mac/iOS Messages and/or SMS is my primary way of talking with friends and family. That seems pretty normal for my age range 25-45 and location (Seattle).

I think it depends a lot on the country you are in. In many European countries, the SMS is practically dead: in Germany or Switzerland it's all WhatsApp these days, with a bit of Telegram or Signal mixed in. Given this, I was surprised to discover how many people are still sending SMS here in Canada.

I think it has a lot do with mobile carrier pricing: here in Canada, mobile fees are enormously expensive, but SMS are almost always included for free. In Germany/Switzerland, many people use prepaid cards where SMS are (still) charged per message.

In Portugal all carriers have had free sms between all carriera for a few years now on almost all plans. I believe people still reasonably use it. Mobile data cannot be assumed to be always on as it is too expensive most of the time and never forget that having mobile data on drains battery too fast. If anyone wants to be sure to that someone replies to something in urgent matter better use standard sms/phone calls. I havr no idea in what kind of bubbles people are mostly nowadays. Anyway, almost everyone has whatsup or telgram too and most people also use those as a main way to communicate and mostly to be in chat groups. I'm the weird one using only sms and signal and very little of facebook messenger.

Head on over to Europe, and:

> Ik steur je wel even een appje

(I'll send you an message on WhatsApp)

is the norm in The Netherlands. My entire family, extended family, and everyone around them is all on WhatsApp. While I communicate with iMessage/SMS with friends in the US, that's not the case outside of the US. Everyone seems to have WhatsApp, most people don't use Google hangouts or other services alongside that, let alone SMS.

i am curious, where does it say "whatsapp" in dutch? you don't use international names?

"appje" is the diminuitive form of "app", which is a shortened form of "whatsapp" (referring to a whatsapp message).

In English, you would never shorten the phrase "I'll send you a whatsapp" to "I'll send you an app" because the word "app" would be confused with a mobile app.

The Dutch still use the word "app" to mean a mobile app; "appje" means a whatsapp. So the diminuitive form allows them to disambiguate.

The -je suffix in Dutch is commonly used and means 'small'. 'app' is used here as an alias for WhatsApp.

I'm also Dutch but I think 'app' is more like an alias for any chat service. WhatsApp is indeed huge though. Texting is basically dead in Europe afaict.

WhatsApp is huge in Brazil, even businesses now offer a WhatsApp number for contact. Maybe that's a by-product of Apple devices being too expensive here.

SMS is mainly used for bank alerts, confirmation codes, advertisement and scammers. I personally haven't used SMS for conversation in years.