At this point Android is such a privacy hell hole that creating a secure messaging app will be doomed to fail. It matter little if the app and its protocols are secure if the device is rooted or otherwise exploited and typed conversations can be siphoned which would expose both the sender and the receiver. The receiver might be an iOS device, causing the communication security/privacy integrity of an iOS user to be at the mercy of any Android device.

iOS messaging apps need an option to warn the sender (or block delivery) when the receiver has non-iOS devices, e.g. in a specific group context with sensitive data.

This would have to be the case. You can't trust an Android device to not have anything between the keyboard app and the messaging app.

how is that different than exploiting security flaws in iOS ?

There is a difference between a security flaw and insecure by design as with Android. One simple example is how third party keyboards work on both platforms. First the user has to install the keyboard, then explicitly go to settings to use it and even then it doesn’t have network access by default. The user has to go back into settings to give it network access and iOS gives you a big scary warning.

Even then, iOS will switch back to the standard keyboard when you type into a password field.

You could just as easily argue that iOS is by nature insecure since absolutely exterior audits are impossible.

It isn’t “impossible.” People have been analyzing assembly language programs and hacking them since the dawn of personal computers. How do you think Google has been able to find exploits in iOS? I have no idea why people think that assembly language is the language of wizards.

Between the binary blob drivers that the OEMs don’t even have access to and Google Play Services, Android is equally hard to audit.

false equivalence

What makes you think that Google is the big competitor to Messages in the US, rather than FB Messenger? I know more (non-tech audience) people who use FB Messenger than any of the google products. Does Google default to Hangouts messages when using an android phone, if the recipient also has an Android (vs. straight MMS)?

Personally, I use Apple's Messages, but that's because it's installed by default and integrated with SMS. It's basically just enhanced MMS, so a really really easy transition.

> Does Google default to Hangouts messages when using an android phone, if the recipient also has an Android (vs. straight MMS)?

No. Google does not integrate their messaging solution with SMS. The real reason behind that is that Google doesn't want to piss off the carriers who still see messaging (iMessage excluded) as a source of revenue.

This is the reasoning for RCS, unfortunately. They could have implemented it everywhere a long time ago but wait for carrier support

Interesting. What is it about Google's position that makes them not want to piss off the carriers? Apple seems to take consumer friendly, anti-carrier positions -- no-lock SIM, iMessages the default.

What do you think makes Google different? Is it because they partner more closely on handsets?

In which countries is messaging still a revenue source? In the UK you usually get unlimited SMS mesages on even the cheapest plans... (and everyone is using whatsapp or facebook messenger anyway, which is probably why)

You realize hangouts supported SMS previously and they removed the functionality to try to get people to use Allo, right?

...and Allo is gone to make room for the carrier implemented RCS.

Agreed, in Australia facebook prety much has a 95% monopoly on messaging, with iMessage a distant second. I haven't even heard of anyone using a Google product for messaging, just a few isolated instances of someone using Viber or Whatsapp (but nothing like how popular it is in Europe).

The primary advantage Facebook has, I believe, other than that everyone is already using it, is that you can find someone on it later without having to ask them for contact details.

Nobody would pay for a messaging service. Even if you would, it wouldn't matter, your non-tech-industry friends wouldn't.

For a different data point from an Australian resident—most people I know use iMessage or Whatsapp. Few people seem to use Facebook Messenger, the only person I know who uses it does so to communicate with one other person.

Interestingly, I don't know a single person who uses FB Messenger. Plenty who use FB, just not messenger. It's SMS, iMessage or WhatsApp.

Apple has and advantage in that you cannot set default messaging app on iOS. For me at least, that is the only thing that keeps me on Messages/Maps/Mail.