Maybe Google can work with Google on implementing a user-level API for Android so manufacturers don’t have a monopoly on RCS apps.
Maybe Google can work with Google on implementing RCS on Google’s own product Google Voice.
This. They haven’t opened up the RCS stuff till now on Android to other apps.
They won’t. It’s part of their “slowly-closed-source-all-of-Android” plan. The old messaging app used to be part of AOSP and you could read the source, how delightful that was.
Would be a good time for a contender to start the third OS. In a few years, more of the population would have interest enough that it might actually get traction.
Any bets on which implements RCS first, iOS or Google Voice?
let us have rcs with google messages when we link our google fi account or let us get our visual voicemails in the google dialler already :(
the only reason i link my account and turn off rcs is for visual voicemails on the web since the stock voicemail app is rubbish
I had visual voicemail on my previous 2 pixels (O2 in the UK), but not on my galaxy s23 ultra on the same network. Seems to be a pixel/iphone exclusive feature.
So all the apple simps who always said Google refused to do this, what’s your retconned excuse now?
We don’t know any details. Google is trumpeting a success and indicating a willingness to assist but it doesn’t really tell us much of what it will look like. Apple is committing to RCS, the industry standard as it is (and I assume will be as I hope it breathes new life into the standard…) and not Google’s current RCS + proprietary bits implementation.
When MS created a Windows Phone YouTube app, Google blocked it with requirements that were either arbitrary (it needs to be HTML5 for example despite iOS and Android apps being native) or impossible to meet. (requiring specific access that Google would not provide)
So while Google framed it as “Microsoft just needs to do X, Y, Z and it’ll be all good!” - sounds good but it intentionally made said requirements impractical or impossible to complete.
Since Google’s been conflating their RCS implementation with RCS the standard, I think it’ll be a funny (if unfortunate) monkey’s-paw result if Apple’s adopts RCS completely as the backup to iMessage but continued carrier and Google implementation fumbling results in no change and the iPhone having to resort to SMS/MMS anyway.
(see: a while back when AT&T’s RCS could only be used between a couple AT&T Samsung phones - but I do hope it’s different this time, I got a group chat I rather take off Instagram.)
