[throw0101a]

> The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.

Each of which is a wall gardened onto itself. So instead of having one app where I can chat, I have App A to talk with Group-of-Friends 1, App B to talk with Group-of-Family/Friends 2, App C…

Thanks, but I'll happily give up E2EE to not have to deal with the above hassle.

At that point I might as well give up on SMS/RCS and go back to only sending e-mails which is an open, federated standard.

> […] and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.

AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client. I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.