[mbowcutt]

> But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's.

I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever.

IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.

[kethinov]

Matrix is the answer. Unlike all the other trendy competitors (Signal, Telegram, etc) it is both fully open source and—crucially—federated.

But just because it's the best technical solution doesn't mean it'll take hold. If the best tech always won, we'd have adopted XMPP a long time before Matrix was created.

Sadly, I'm beginning to think the only way we're gonna put a stop to this crap is to threaten companies like Apple with antitrust regulation for such actions.

[istjohn]

I'd much rather be locked into one app than be forced into an entire ecosystem.

[HNcantBtrustd]

Users that promote priority network effects are bad for everyone else.

This isn't Google's fault. It's low education users who get whatever phone their parents bought.