We are talking about iMessage.
Were you not aware of the functionality differences, cross platform?
I can totally understand if you weren't aware of them, because you had only used one type of phone, for example.
It can be hard to know about things like this, depending on ones personal experience.
Apple is pretty clearly blocking Google (or any other Android app developer) from implementing this functionality and greatly benefits from it. Particularly relevant for the age demographic this thread originally referenced.
What functionality? Give some concrete examples.
Try again.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
Sorry, but Google's proprietary closed source fork of RCS is not any kind of "standard".
> Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
This is very amusing given that Google wants to charge people to have RCS that can interoperate with their proprietary closed source implementation of RCS.
> If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has a whole sales pitch about how Google Jibe can "help carriers quickly scale RCS services, iterate in short cycles, and benefit from improvements immediately." So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
We'll see how it works out for both companies.
That's not blocking.
A good example of blocking is not allowing any developers on a competing smart phone platform to write an app that allows users to access your monopoly internet video platform.