> * Carriers CAN and likely WILL charge for it, because they can and because sadly (as noted above) RCS is visible to them as something more than an encrypted stream of data

Exactly. Carriers will see this as another revenue opportunity with almost zero marginal cost. They'll pounce on charging a premium for it. They want the glory days of per-minute per-text charges where you had to buy large pre-paid packages or risk high per-message charges.

Google has failed themselves repeatedly at their chat offerings. I personally believe it is due simply to Google's incentives: You don't get a promotion for maintaining hangouts.

Wave, GChat/Talk, Hangouts, Allo. All failed by Google neglect. Why should RCS be any better. It isn't even dependent on Google's neglect. It is dependent on our already highly unreliable North American carriers.

> * Carriers CAN and likely WILL charge for it, because they can and because sadly (as noted above) RCS is visible to them as something more than an encrypted stream of data

I need to agree on this one too.

I just recently found out that my Samsung phone has video calling but, surprise surprise, carrier charges for that extra!

But of course any other video app over internet (such as Google Duo) works with no additional charges because mobile internet is basically free! (where free means 10$ for two lines sharing 40 GB of data monthly)

There is historic reason for this : all carriers and phone makers see messaging experience as critical and want to control it themselves. Google didn't have enough pull to make messaging mandatory part of default google apps bundle.

Then iMessage and WhatsApp happened and Google desperately tries to rectify the situation. See Hangouts SMS integration.

Latest two-prong attempt is Allo and RCS. Allo failed. The reason RCS kinda works out is that carriers can't combat iMessage alone anymore. RCS was conceived as asymmetrical response to iMessage which aligns both Google's and carriers' interests. Many carries don't even try to implement it and rely on Google's default client implementation and route through default google servers.

> At this point everyone is too burned by Google releasing new messaging apps and then sunsetting them year later.

What if they just released an upgrade to their existing Messages app and enrolled everyone by default in a new Google version of iMessage?

That's basically what Apple did. Upgrade to iOS 5 and you're automatically enrolled in iMessage without any extra steps. Suddenly your messaging experience just got a whole lot better without any extra work.

That's exactly what they did with Google Allo...

The EU would take them to court before the rollout was finished.

How is it different from iMessage?

iPhone is far away from a monopoly in Europe--in fact I can't think of anybody who uses iMessage at all, and I own an iPhone myself.

Not sure. There’s strong competition in the market in the form of iMessage (and others - see WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc) so I doubt there would be grounds for an anti-trust lawsuit.

There is yes. But Messages would presumably be preinstalled. In that case the EU would have a problem with it most likely.

If it weren‘t preinstalled. We‘ll then it‘s pretty much Signal for example and that doesn‘t solve the problem. iMessage works because it‘s preinstalled and default.

It‘s a miracle and kind of ironic that SMS being non-free drove the whole world (except the US where it was) away from it.

>iMessage works because it‘s preinstalled and default.

Is this country dependent? It is absolutely on-by-default in the United States.

True. Now that you mention it. I seem to remember having iMessage (the feature) be opt-in in Europe. So the feature is on by default in the US for sure? I guess that somehow negates my earlier post. But I suppose people would notice the green bubbles everywhere and remember to turn it on.

Hmm is this a defense against antitrust concerns as well?

iMessage is not opt-in. It's enabled by default even here in the UK. The good thing about it is that it doesn't even require an account, if you just want to use it with a phone number (you need an account if you want to use it with another identity like an email address).

Messages is preinstalled. Regardless of strong competition in the messaging market, the EU would accuse Google of leveraging their dominance in another market (Google Apps on Android and Android itself) to assist Messages.

* Phone number-as-identity is so stupid, even apple admitted it

iMessage automatically working with phone numbers was the main reason it catapulted to such high usage so quickly. People didn't have to change their workflow, they just got brought into it automatically.

There is a mapping from phone number to identity, but the phone number isn't itself the identity.

For rcs it is

Parent was talking about imessage.

> RCS is reliant on carriers

Isn't that exactly what this article claims is changing? Google leading the main implementation also means most others will have to follow, and they very well could have an E2E mode similar to Allo's incognito mode. Not as good as always on, but still. Having it free through Google also makes it harder for ISP's to charge for it.

And who knows how long until Google gives up on this tech and comes out with something different anyway. I give it 2 years max.

The main problem is that everyone wants to profit from messaging in some way (carriers, google etc.) whereas there is only nominal cost to run messaging (not including development hours). Whatsapp was able to do it with $1/year. So there is no way to break this conundrum in the standard capitalistic model. If they were looking for technical solutions, they could have implemented something like signal as an AOSP app and be done with it. But there's no money in that.

iMessage actually works with any email address.

I’ve found it more reliable to use an email address for sender and recipient, then it avoids the limbo of trying to send, SMS fallback, etc.

Not to be conspiratorial but I find all of this to be pretty intentional. It's currently very hard for me to stay on T-Mobile's legacy (i.e. true) PAYG plan which only supports regular texts. I often have to ask people I'm doing business with to send things as a regular text because emojis and pics don't download.

Looking at the overview on wikipedia and gsma, this thing is feature creeped to the absolute rim before overflowing. Including parts of the specification for APIs and app integration if I'm reading it correctly.

Frankly, if a corporation wanted to lay the groundwork for itself to be the private contractor for when the government wants to make use of the data that can be hoovered from these open channels. It would look a hell of a lot like Google. All this feature creep in abundance is a great way to lock people into centralized monolithic apps or force them into new revenue streams (again, they're already trying it with my PAYG plan for MMS).

I could take it to its greatest logical conclusion especially considering the API, app integration & visible protocol fingerprint and just say this is a great way to introduce WeChat by Google.

I hope this doesn't sound irrational. But I for one find it irrational that I'm even in this position with regular texting versus MMS. It's like phone carriers are the only ones allowed to have shitty interoperability of this kind. Getting really tired of it. Also I hope you're right that their fuckups are resulting in lower adoption, because 68 (including T-Mobile) carriers have already signed onto the Universal Profile part of the spec:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#St...