Google Doubles Down on Unbelievably Confusing Messaging Strategy - The UpStream

Google Doubles Down on Unbelievably Confusing Messaging Strategy

posted Saturday Apr 21, 2018 by Scott Ertz

Google Doubles Down on Unbelievably Confusing Messaging Strategy

Over the past few years, it has been nearly impossible to understand what Google is up to when it comes to messaging. They have rolled out several services, all with a similar and tragic fate: abandonment. When the service isn't abandoned entirely, it has features stolen for another platform, as was the case with Google Hangouts, which lost features to Google Allo. Google Allo, the not quite WhatsApp clone, is the most recent service to be abandoned by the company. The service was never widely accepted, possibly because at launch the service didn't really work - at least not how anyone would have wanted.

The service launched with only an iPhone (not iPad) and Android phone (not tablet) app. To use the app, you needed to use your phone number (like WhatsApp), but only on a single device. If you logged in using the same number, the original device would log out and delete your profile and chats. It seemed that absolutely nothing was saved on the internet. That also explained why it took a full year before you could use the service on desktop, though the sign-in process was even more insane and still only supported a single desktop.

After only 19 months in service, Allo is officially being retired. That's probably file, being as no one was using it. The entire development team is being transitioned to a new project within Google named Chat (not Google Chat). While it would seem that Google's next desperate attempt at messaging would be an Android-focused close of iMessage, the company has another idea that is even less likely to succeed.

Chat is designed to be a carrier-backed Rich Communication Services platform, intended to help carriers support the decade-old messaging standard. RCS supports almost everything that iMessage supports, while being carrier and platform agnostic. In the US, the big 4 all support various and fragmented versions of RCS, but only Sprint supports the full standard. Chat would give carriers another way to implement the technology. Interestingly, the reason Sprint supports the full standard is because they use a platform called Google Jibe, which seems like it would be a direct competitor to Chat, another confusing decision from the company.

Google has worked with most of the carriers around the world, as well as over 50 manufacturers, to implement the technology. While Google claims that they expect it to be available within the year, comments from some carriers suggest otherwise. T-Mobile is expected to be complete in by the end of June, but Verizon and AT&T have not announced a timeline, while US Cellular has said they have no plans to implement it at all.

In addition to phased roll-out, the other issue with Chat being carrier-dependent is that, like SMS, it is not encrypted communication. That means that it will be susceptible to the same privacy issues as SMS. Governments can request your Chat history from your carrier, and the data they receive will be easily readable. Since RCS is internet-powered, someone on an unprotected Wi-Fi network could also get your data. This is different from how iMessage, Signal and Telegram, which are similar services, all perform, being fully encrypted.

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