Google could have avoided all this many many years ago, but they fucked up big time.
In Europe Whatsapp solved this issue, in China Wechat did, in other parts of the world Telegram or Viber or Messanger or some other app did.
The reality is, only the US somehow stuck with SMS for the longest time and then transitioned to iMessage as the main IM app, an app that only exists on one platform.
this. I don’t understand why people fail to acknowledge that Google fails to present a competitor to iMessage when they kill every chat/IM app they have after 2-3 years and replace it. I totally agree that the lack of interop with Android sucks, but that’s just the world we live in. Apple makes a far better messenger than any other service for my how I use it.
I will say I think the best thing ever was Palm WebOS’s Synergy. Where it pulled all your different accounts stuff into one view (Yahoo, AIM, SMS, etc). It wasn’t a true interoperable service, but it at least made it where you only needed one app for all your accounts.
Google could have avoided all this many many years ago, but they fucked up big time. In Europe Whatsapp solved this issue, in China Wechat did, in other parts of the world Telegram or Viber or Messanger or some other app did. The reality is, only the US somehow stuck with SMS for the longest time and then transitioned to iMessage as the main IM app, an app that only exists on one platform.
If anyone doubts how poorly Google have managed messaging, they need only to read this article: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
It’s decades of Google screwing up and shooting themselves in the foot.
this. I don’t understand why people fail to acknowledge that Google fails to present a competitor to iMessage when they kill every chat/IM app they have after 2-3 years and replace it. I totally agree that the lack of interop with Android sucks, but that’s just the world we live in. Apple makes a far better messenger than any other service for my how I use it. I will say I think the best thing ever was Palm WebOS’s Synergy. Where it pulled all your different accounts stuff into one view (Yahoo, AIM, SMS, etc). It wasn’t a true interoperable service, but it at least made it where you only needed one app for all your accounts.