Android Messages will be the new default texting app Google wants you to use – The Verge (Feb 24, 2017)
There are two separate stories here – firstly, a reminder that Google has two separate messaging apps on Android, and it’s still actively pushing both; and secondly, that Google is doubling down on its commitment to the RCS standard and working with carriers and device makers to spread its use on Android. The former is a long-standing story: Google has always had several different apps for the same use case on its devices, a problem that only gets worse when OEMs and carriers add their own. To some extent, though, this standardization around RCS should help with the OEM / carrier side of that, by consolidating the SMS apps into a single standard Android app. But this is also about the richer features enabled by RCS, which is a telecoms-driven standard for richer messaging which is always at least several years behind the feature set offered by third party messaging apps at any given point in time. This is Google’s effort to create an equivalent to iMessage, but one which is far more open and inclusive than iMessage itself is, for better or worse. Google doesn’t control the standard, which is basic in its functionality, and that makes it a tough differentiator for Android, but it may be the best Google can do in this space.
via The Verge
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