SMS is still huge in the US, especially because of iMessage integration

Yeah I still use it. I never used a messaging app post gtalk. So many different platforms, it just became a nightmare.

I am still after a lovely opensource cross-platform simple distributed secure messaging and video platform.

I'd read that Allo was being abandoned for Messages. And I'd never heard of Duo until this post. Very confused naming and products at Google. I was trying to get my head around the differences between Play Music and Youtube Music yesterday - a case in point.

> Where I live almost nobody uses SMS for person to person

Isn't that recursive thinking? No one uses SMS because it's primitive and limited compared to regular messengers.

> I wouldn't want to use a mobile only protocol

I'm curious, but could RCS be interchangeably used both through provider and through a host such as Google? Could Google not host their own RCS backend?

> No one uses SMS because it's primitive and limited compared to regular messengers.

You also have to take into account that SMS is 5-10 times more expensive almost everywhere outside the US. Unless you have a flat-rate plan, a single 140 character messages is about 10 cents where I live. And even if you have a flat-rate plan for domestic messages, it's 1-2 USD (per message!) when sent to friends and family abroad. I don't use SMS because it's just being ridiculously over-priced. I want my device to use data to send data, regardless of what kind it is.

" more expensive almost everywhere outside the US."

It's (sms/texting) free (http://mobile.free.fr/) and unlimited on a 2 euros monthly phone subscription with 2 hours of voice communication in France. That makes it the cheapest way to communicate at all, here. Cheaper than voice and much cheaper than internet data. Even the absolute poorest of the country can use texting. It's more accessible than DATA driven apps and can run on dumb phones.

It's also very unreliable if you're messaging abroad. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If you're roaming and so is the other person, it becomes even trickier. At least data works and within the EU is pretty much free.

It doesn't matter why, the fact of the matter is that no one uses SMS in these places, which is also true wherever I've lived.

People use Whatsapp primarily, or facebook messenger, or (in my bubble anyway, not so widespread) Telegram. These products have the network effect already established, and no one is likely to go back to crappy SMS, even if it is dressed up.

>No one uses SMS because it's primitive and limited compared to regular messengers.

No, noone uses it because it doesn't use data. I walk into a supermarket and lose signal so I can't SMS anymore. I can use the wifi to send messages even without signal.

Yes, I know there are SMS over Wifi apps, but they're proprietary and usually require signal to enable.

I don't use Android's Messages for SMS, I installed a special-purpose SMS app specifically to avoid mixing Internet-based messages with SMS-based messages. I have zero interest in intermixing the two.

Other articles have indicated that Google is going the RCS route because they don’t want to rock the boat with mobile carriers, who do not want to see a proprietary chat system like iMessage on their networks.