[marzullo]

This is correct. Google put a lot of effort into making carriers adopt RCS (which has most of the functionality of iMessage), but Apple will not adopt it to keep their "competitive advantage."

https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

I use an iPhone now but these kinds of business tactics and the others mentioned here really make me wish there were more competitive products on the other end.

[saagarjha]

RCS is pretty garbage without Google’s extensions. Of course this ends up being very similar to iMessage.