It's hardware specific! Most of the planet is on Android. If there is a way to do iMessage on Android, I can at least say that not many people know how.

I think that's where Google Messages is headed unless they somehow decide to put it on other app stores.

The only “green” people I know are google employees and my mom, who can’t afford an iPhone. The solution is simple to their problem- buy an iPhone.

It’s almost like the iPhone is a fetish or totem that grants access to iMessage (although you can message from macos or iCloud.com impractically).

It’s quite strange how this is a very simple, solved, problem for iPhone for many years. Google can fix it by literally cloning iMessage and arguing with carriers. They don’t. I suspect it’s because they want to be the only one with access to the cleartext and they aren’t willing to make a consumer-focused decision to keep all messages ciphertext.

So “most of the planet” has to suffer Google’s anti-consumer decision.

Okay, your experience is ... not representative. In this world there are tons of people using iphones, tons of other people using android. You see both frequently. There happen to be way more people using android but it doesn't matter, because there are sizable numbers using both, we should only consider solutions that work on both.

I agree, it’s not representative at all. But my point is that android users have problems because of the device they buy. There are likely trade offs. But google doesn’t want to solve this problem on a way that customers want.

It’s like buying a diesel vehicle and then complaining that the hybrid systems suck for them. Don’t buy a diesel if you want hybrid engines. Or work with the manufacturer to change their incentive model.

But google is an ad company and is unlikely to make products where it is hard to sell ads.

I don't get your response. You have an app that only works on Apples, so you are basically suggesting that they should abandon android. But other people probably have an app that they require that is not on iphones. There are many different chat apps with billions of users that didn't come from Google and work on androids. Google is not stealing your text messages, if that's what you are thinking somehow.