[ender7]

I have no insider knowledge here, but Google tried to go the high route of working with carriers for years before giving up on their intransigence.

I suspect that Google's RCS is proprietary as a blunt instrument to prevent carriers from trying to either (a) undermine e2ee in some weasely way or (b) have the ability to pick and choose the pieces of the implementation they want to support. You either get the whole thing, with e2ee that you don't control, or nothing.

Sadly the lesson from Google, Apple, and Whatsapp here appears to be "cooperating with telecom carriers is a fool's errand".

[Zak]

Google had the opportunity to own this space a decade ago when they made Hangouts the default SMS client on Android. It's exactly what Apple did with iMessage, but Hangouts was cross-platform.

It's absolutely bizarre to me they didn't iterate on that. I'm kind of glad they didn't.

[starttoaster]

On the flipside, Hangouts being sunset is the main reason I eventually left the Android ecosystem. Hangouts on a Pixel phone on Google Fi service was excellent for an SMS app. Feeling snubbed by the life getting choked out of Hangouts, I'm no longer a user of all 3.

[throw0101b]

> […] to prevent carriers from trying to either (a) undermine e2ee in some weasely way […]

Reminder that carriers have lawful intercept mandates through legal statutes: it may actually be illegal for them to implement E2EE.

[rpmisms]

Yeah, they can read what you send. If what you send is encrypted, they can read that too, just not in decrypted form.

[peyton]

It’s not the high road. They sell more expensive ads into it. I hope there’s a way to turn it off on my iPhone.

[hedora]

A corollary to that lesson is to not support RCS.

I'd have much rather iMessage only open up interoperability with E2EE platforms like signal or even Whatsapp (because Facebook is somehow the lesser evil in this corner of the privacy world).

[scarface_74]

In theory, E2EE is good until someone you are messaging turns on iCloud backup of messages you sent and now law enforcement can force Apple to give them your iCloud backup - with iMessage

[madeofpalk]

iPhone messages app - where iMessage appears - is already interoperable with every other phone. SMS!