I would argue that iMessage is excellent. At no point have I wanted to use any of the alternatives in the many years of using it.

In any case, calling any of their services a disaster is disingenuous to begin with.

> I would argue that iMessage is excellent.

I wouldn't. Interacting with people who don't use iMessage is awful. It gets very confused when you try to send group messages when some people have iMessage and some don't, for example.

Google's offerings handle this much better, especially if you're on Android, but even if you aren't.

What you’re describing is no longer iMessage and I would still say it works pretty well given the archaic technology involved. I don’t think contacting people on Signal via WhatsApp works too well either.

How does Google’s offering handle this situation better?

iMessage suffers from the same interoperability problems that most Apple software does -- they don't really consider use cases that don't involve Apple.

Hangouts for example understands how different carriers handle different types of data differently, and accounts for that when sending messages. So when you send to a group with different capabilities, it adjusts accordingly and automatically in the background.

What exactly is your issue with iMessage? Messages on iOS also automatically adjust to the participants' capabilities. Have you used iMessage recently? It degrades quite well. You can't backfill functionality that doesn't exist on SMS.

I use iMessage every day. Most of my friends are on iMessage. Most of my family too.

The problem is our family group text. Some of the family is on Android. For the family group text, I use Hangouts because not all the messages go through if I use iMessage.