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Google Is 'Pausing' Work On Allo In Favor 'Chat,' An RCS-Based Messaging Standard (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares an exclusive report from The Verge about Google's next big fix for Android's messaging mess: Instead of bringing a better app to the table, it's trying to change the rules of the texting game, on a global scale. Google has been quietly corralling every major cellphone carrier on the planet into adopting technology to replace SMS. It's going to be called "Chat," and it's based on a standard called the "Universal Profile for Rich Communication Services." SMS is the default that everybody has to fall back to, and so Google's goal is to make that default texting experience on an Android phone as good as other modern messaging apps. As part of that effort, Google says it's "pausing" work on its most recent entry into the messaging space, Allo. It's the sort of "pause" that involves transferring almost the entire team off the project and putting all its resources into another app, Android Messages. Google won't build the iMessage clone that Android fans have clamored for, but it seems to have cajoled the carriers into doing it for them. In order to have some kind of victory in messaging, Google first had to admit defeat. Some of the new features associated with Chat include read receipts, typing indicators, full-resolution images and video, and group texts. It's important to keep in mind that it's a carrier-based service, not a Google service. It won't be end-to-end encrypted, and it will follow the same legal intercept standards. The new Chat services will be switched on in the near future, but ultimately carriers will dictate exactly when Chat will go live. Also, you may be persuaded to upgrade your data plan since Chat messages will be sent with your data plan instead of your SMS plan.
Don't have a data plan, don't want a data plan.
Fuck you and your data plan, you better keep supporting SMS, because it's not going anywhere.
That would mean they have to give up the cash cow that is SMS. I get 4000 sms for 'free' with my pre-paid card and 4GB of data fora month for 25EUR. After a minth I use the 25 to buy 500MB and that is good enough. The other 15 i use for SMS as I have to pay for them.
Having that included in my data would make me buy less. That will be their profit that is gone.
Now I pay 0.10 Eur per sms for 120 characters of data. So they already make a shitload on them. Doubt they will drop ot fast.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Since SMS is baked into the cellphone signaling protocol (and is the last thing still working in an emergency when data and voice are overloaded), I suspect it will be sticking around for a while.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Maybe I'm missing the point, but why are we working on a carrier-based replacement for SMS at all? Building services into the fabric of cell carriers makes everything less transparent and portable, and opens opportunities for them to play hanky-panky with pricing and restrictions. In my view, carriers should accept a role as a dumb-pipe wireless Internet service, and services should be platform agnostic.
Could we just come up with a messaging standard that everyone can agree to? Get Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft all to agree on a set of protocols and standards. The same way that a Gmail user can email and Office 365 user, a user of Apple Messages should be able to message a Facebook user. Why is that so hard?
As far as I can tell, it's not. It's just that all these companies all want their own little walled gardens so that they can abuse their customers, or else are suffering from Not-Invented-Here syndrome.
So its just for the 1% then
Google dropping the ball on a project. Who would have thunk. Google has shown to be pretty good at two things. First, at launching products that are supposed to be kind of flagship, only to abandon them completely after a while. Two, at making sure that their product naming is as confusing as possible. The Google culture, indeed.
XMPP (formerly known as Jabber) has been around since 1999 and has most if not all of these features. Any it is missing can be submitted and added as it's an open standard. Google has essentially embraced its role as the new Microsoft and has begun their EEE march. Chrome has become the new IE6 with all of the non-standard extensions they've rolled out without so much as submitting anything to W3C for consideration. I'm now looking for alternatives to all Google properties.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If I want to pretend I didn't get someone's message, that should be my own damn business. Ditto for "typing indicators" which I assume is what insecure people look at to see if someone is typing them a reply (pathetic fools).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
SMS can be used when there is a very weak signal, and no data connectivity. It has been used by hikers, people in sinking ships, and all sorts. This is really the only reason to use it now, but it is important
Giving people what they do not want, no matter how many times they're told what people want. Google you see, knows better than you, what you want.
I'd argue the most annoying feature of Apple's iMessage is convincing iPhone users that "texting" has all these features, so they'll freely use them when communicating with you... Thus forcing you to experience the pain of crappy MMS when talking with them.
Also: Based on SMS so that carriers can charge us per-message.
No sig today...
Did anyone else reading this summary think of the old source control system, RCS? RCS underlies CVS source control, and creates local ",v" files to record source control changes? I still use it occasionally, locally, when I merely want to record changes in a specific configuration file and not be burdened by git or subversion trying to report on all changes in the directory.
I acknowledge that those would be confusing to send via a telephone based messaging system.
Instead of bringing a better app to the table, it's trying to change the rules of the texting game, on a global scale. Google has been quietly corralling every major cellphone carrier on the planet into adopting technology to replace SMS
Hello Microsoft 2.0
Or "Telegram" or "Signal", but with extra data charges.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Certain modern norms tha tbenefit the enduser are a result of happening at just the right time.
The network companies of the time could not keep up with the internet, and as such there were no players to prevent email from settling into the unassailable role it had gotten. It's possible that if AOL had played things a tad bit differently, we'd all be using AOL mail instead and email would be like XMPP, this idealistic concept that no one uses because it can't reach most people. None of the business folk at the time that had the resources was able to foresee a strategy to 'own' that. In this century however, federated standards have generally failed to succeed, as the stakeholders now have a handle on how to prevent that from happening again.
Same with drm-free music. When wired internet became feasible to transfer music, but maybe not quite stream it as well as music players that couldn't realistically connect to the internet, attempts at DRM failed so badly they had to give up on the concept. By the time video became feasible, so to had network connectivity evolved to the point where any video playback device could pretty much have some network access at all times, or maybe it was the move away from hardware device provided interface towards 'apps' to consume a video content providers product.
If you strike and get some fundamental truth about technology established, it's hard to get rid of, but the companies are *all* over messaging and won't stand for it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Allo, Chat, whatever comes next...
I'm still using hangouts since it's built into the gmail web interface and the iPhone app isn't that bad either.
I don't understand why SMS is not updated. They create G3, G4, G5, VoLTE. Why SMS is still the same? They could at least make messages longer.
Google's new AI-enhanced image processing combined with unencrypted trafficing can automatically identify naked baby photos and upload them to child porn sites without any intervention on your part-- tremendously convenient, with your deniability completely protected. /P
I'm pretty sure we had widely available instant messaging clients back in the mid-1990's. 20+ years later and we still can't settle on a standard and live with a fractured set of incompatible networks.
The whole point of the Information Age is for everyone to be connected and able to communicate with each other. Several proprietary chat protocols that are deprecated by their vendor every 5 years goes against progress.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Did you use iMessage to type that? Turn off your shitty fucking curly quotes.
Wave really was awesome. It was everything anyone needed or wanted it to be. AND it was opensource and cross platform. If it had been baked into the heart of Gmail from the start it would have taken over the world.
But sadly it was killed by pride and personal fiefdoms.
Why in the world would anyone develop a messaging app nowadays without end-to-end encryption? C'MON, Google!
JFC. One step forward; two steps back.
I suspect it's typical Google culture where perfect is the enemy of good enough. They resisted encrypting Chrome passwords for so long because they felt that storing passwords locally was insecure. But somehow forgot that storing clear text passwords is even worse.
I can run OMEMO over XMPP. I wonder if, with the right phone software, OMEMO could tunnel over SMS as well. Might be worthwhile to research.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Google's left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. Less than a couple of months ago, Google released Hangouts for Business under the name Hangouts Chat. And thus the product branding confusion continues.