> When most people you know use iMessage then Android is a bad experience.

Isn't this because Android uses open standards for its SMS and iOS refuses to do so?

Does it matter for me as a user?

No, and I wouldn't want to imply otherwise. I was genuinely asking because my recollection is that the answer is "yes" but I don't recall.

This is correct. Google put a lot of effort into making carriers adopt RCS (which has most of the functionality of iMessage), but Apple will not adopt it to keep their "competitive advantage."

https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

I use an iPhone now but these kinds of business tactics and the others mentioned here really make me wish there were more competitive products on the other end.

RCS is pretty garbage without Google’s extensions. Of course this ends up being very similar to iMessage.

RCS as a baseline standard is proprietary, but google then slapped a bunch of proprietary extensions onto it that it refuses to license, so no, it's not.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

> 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. Google has an RCS API already, but only Samsung is allowed to use it because Samsung signed some kind of partnership deal.

> 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.

Like c'mon google doesn't care about open-standards except insofar as that allows them to embrace-extend-extinguish. google's end goal is imessage but with google servers in the middle instead of apple ones.

Thanks, glad I asked - I genuinely was not sure.

Sorry, it sounded snarky/pointed, that was more adversarial than was ideal. It really is hard to ask a question these days, if it's political...

> there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now

To be fair, this criticism is fundamentally true of iMessage, too. Implementing all of iMessage's features in an open, trustless manner is impossible.

I loved Android back when I had the time to hack around with ROMs and crazy customization. It's fun. But these days in my busy working life, I don't have time for that kind of stuff, I just want something that works well and gets regular security updates. My Android phones weren't really cutting it.