[wolvoleo]

RCS is not modern. E2EE is only an addon and it's not open. As others have mentioned it's not even available with interoperation. And it was really invented by carriers for exactly that purpose: To regain SMS/MMS revenue. But at this point here in Europe SMS usage between people had vanished anyway (except for spam and poor 2FA implementations)

And the social problems are not a technology problem, it's more a result of the harsh competitive American society. Without blue bubbles there'll be something else that kids will be bullied for. Only when the whole concept of "everyone except the #1 winner is a loser" is dropped this will disappear.

And Google didn't try to convince Apple to do this out of the goodness of their heart. Like I said most of the protocol (except the E2EE) is open but the implementation is not. It gives google even more control. You also won't be able to use it on a PC without a google account which is a big dealbreaker compared to Whatsapp and Signal. iMessage isn't a thing here in Europe anyway (neither is SMS/MMS).

[jupr]

iMessage isn't a thing in Europe?

[wolvoleo]

No not really. It's technically available but nobody uses it. Everyone is on WhatsApp. Even companies. I never get messages from contacts on SMS either (so it's not going through fallback). I think it's because iOS just isn't really that widely used here. Not used enough to have critical mass for an iOS-only messaging service.

At least in the countries I deal with in Europe (Netherlands, Spain, France, Ireland). Perhaps in UK the adoption is higher because they have more money and thus iOS usage is higher. But everyone I know is on either WhatsApp or Telegram (and sometimes but very rarely Signal). Also we are much more socially disconnected from the UK since brexit.

As a bit of added info, the reason SMS is so hated here is because providers offered paid SMS services. You could sign up for e.g. daily weather reports and you got billed for it on your phone bill. It could be up to 1-2 euro per SMS. Some countries even up to 5 as far as I remember. This service was abused a LOT by scammers who just signed people up without consent and refused to remove them. The carriers did almost nothing against this because they were raking in the euros. This caused people to be very wary of SMS. Most people I know never use it anymore. They get worried when they receive something because they are afraid they'll get charged. Which can really add up if they do it from the start of your billing cycle. So its use as iMessage fallback is also pretty nonexistent.

So this is also why I am so wary of RCS and the carriers. They have played a deplorable role in the 2000s/early 2010s. Really cashing in hard with small bundles and insane out-of-bundle charges for SMS, the pay service scams etc. It was really their cash cow. So my trust in them is forever lost, I will never trust them to provide more than just transporting neutral bits from A to B.

It's also why I will never sign a contract with telcos and always use prepay. That way they can never take more of my money than I have in credit.

[cubefox]

> RCS is not modern.

False. RCS is a replacement for SMS and MMS, and it is far more modern than those. RCS is the most modern game in town.

> As others have mentioned it's not even available with interoperation.

Others might have "mentioned" this, but it is false. RCS is interoperabile. It is supported both in Android and iOS by different applications. That covers the two mobile operating systems that constitute nearly the entire mobile market.

> And it was really invented by carriers for exactly that purpose: To regain SMS/MMS revenue.

I don't think that's true since they didn't charge for RCS. But even if it's true: that doesn't mean RCS is bad. RCS is like HTTP+HTML, but for messaging. Saying that RCS is bad is like demanding that all browsers should be proprietary without supporting anything resembling a web standard. Which would be crazy.

> But at this point here in Europe SMS usage between people had vanished anyway

That's irrelevant because RCS is still important in the US.

> And the social problems are not a technology problem,

They absolutely are (also) a technology problem. If people can't properly interact with each other in group chat because one side falls back to MMS and all pictures are ultra low resolution, then that's annoying for everyone. Of course people would say the problem is with Android rather than with iMessage refusing for many years to adopt RCS, which hugely boosted Apple's market share among young people in the US.

> Without blue bubbles there'll be something else that kids will be bullied for.

False. They weren't bullied for blue bubbles. They were "bullied" because green bubble people had bad compatibility problems. Why? Because of lack of RCS.

> And Google didn't try to convince Apple to do this out of the goodness of their heart.

That's an absurd statement. Google was obviously not happy that Apple was (as they even confirmed in internal emails) actively using incompatibility to increase their US market share. Apple was basically acting like Internet Explorer vs Netscape.

> Like I said most of the protocol (except the E2EE) is open but the implementation is not.

It's still an open protocol. Not everything must be open source. Proprietary apps like WhatsApp use neither an open protocol nor are they open source.

> It gives google even more control.

Even more? Proprietary protocols like iMessage or WhatsApp have far more control.

> You also won't be able to use it on a PC without a google account which is a big dealbreaker compared to Whatsapp and Signal.

That's an absurd comparison because you can't use WhatsApp or Signal without an WhatsApp or Signal account either. Not even on phones.

> iMessage isn't a thing here in Europe anyway

That's irrelevant. Open standards are good even if non-open things dominate in some area.

> (neither is SMS/MMS).

Also irrelevant. RCS is an open protocol that is vastly superior to SMS and MMS and not a closed and proprietary system like WhatsApp or iMessage. This makes it a great system, similar to HTTP and HTML.