
Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat messaging service - jkjustinkumar
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43836504
======
sp0ck
Does it use end-to-end encryption: NOPE

Does it use IP and carrier as a fallback (to protect against data
retention/archiving text messages): NOPE

Apple made it with first approach. Google:chat app, sms app, allo, duo,
hangount

This will be next on the list.

Google can't make good message app - it's against their business model. You
can't make targeted ads when you can't read user messages.

~~~
Pharylon
First, this isn't a Google app. Google is pushing the RCS standard, a standard
that some carriers already support.

And yeah, it doesn't support encryption so it's clearly inferior to something
like Signal, but open standards that don't live in a silo are still important.
For instance, I have friends that almost exclusively chat through Facebook
Messenger. Since I won't install Facebook Messenger, I chat with them over
SMS. A "better SMS" would be nice, and might help ease people out of the FB
Messenger silo.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _open standards that don 't live in a silo are still important_

Yes, I'd much prefer that Google and the carriers both have the opportunity to
read all my communications instead of one or the other.

~~~
Someone1234
While the standard itself doesn't enforce any encryption, you could write an
RCS based app that encrypts messages between endpoints. There are SMS apps
that do exactly that, you just have the other contact install the same app and
scan a QR code.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
No you can’t. Unless you want to chat with yourself. These things only work if
everyone is using them without extra effort. That’s the point.

~~~
Someone1234
> These things only work if everyone is using them without extra effort.

It works fine without "everyone" using it. It can be used as best-effort
security rather than a complete blanket.

~~~
wu_tang_chris
i'll have one iphone, please

------
wereHamster
> Google's Anil Sabharwal told technology news site The Verge that "RCS
> continues to be a carrier-owned service", which means that messages can
> still be legally intercepted.

No thanks. We should push toward services which offer end-to-end encryption.

~~~
mlok
I wonder why the Signal protocol could not be the SMS replacement. And it is
already widely used.

~~~
_o_
Each company wants to earn by using your data, and Signal doesnt allow that
(but it can be backdoored). No company like google, apple, microsoft,... is
going to give you application where they cant intercept the content.

~~~
TheCoreh
Apple's iMessage is end-to-end encrypted

~~~
gsich
You can receive messages on multiple devices. So it would be easy for Apple to
simply add a new device without showing you.

~~~
Angostura
From: [https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-
how...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-how-secure-
imessage-really-is/)

You’ve actually got one set of keys for each device you add to iCloud, and
each iMessage is encrypted independently for each device. So if you have two
devices — say, an iPad and an iPhone — each message sent to you is actually
encrypted (AES-128) and stored on Apple’s servers twice. Once for each device.
When you pull down a message, it’s specifically encrypted for the device
you’re on.

~~~
gsich
Yes. This does not contradict the parent post.

~~~
1inuxoid
Why is this being downvoted? Is there something that guarantees visibility of
unknown devices linked to an iCloud-account?

~~~
vxNsr
Because it's missing the point that a sibling makes.

------
jlgaddis
> _The company said it expected the functionality to be widely available on
> Android phones within two years._

Just in time to kill it off!

~~~
pilsetnieks
This isn't a Google app, it's a GSMA standard
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services))
that's been in the works as long as Android itself. Also, I don't get why
they're saying it will be available in the future, it's already been available
since Android 6, if I'm not mistaken
([https://blog.google/topics/rcs/delivering-rcs-messaging-
andr...](https://blog.google/topics/rcs/delivering-rcs-messaging-android-
users-worldwide/))

------
upofadown
>To develop Chat, Google has worked with more than 50 mobile networks
including Vodafone, T-Mobile and Verizon and manufacturers such as Samsung, LG
and Huawei.

Why? This is a proposal for a protocol that works over the internet. What do
networks and hardware makers have to do with this?

In practice the only entity they would have to talk to for a SMS replacement
would be Apple. The world does not actually need a universal SMS replacement
however. The world needs a universal instant message protocol that works
everywhere; not just on phones.

~~~
IshKebab
To be fair, for the only things that SMS is still used for (outside the US)
this could be quite useful. E.g. parcel tracking SMS's could now include a
map. Bank statement texts could be in a proper tabular form. That sort of
thing.

But that's only if networks don't charge as much as they charge for SMS and
I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
philliphaydon
All this stuff is done on what’s app and line outside of the US...

~~~
josteink
Does _your bank_ send you messages on WhatsApp? Ofcourse not. They use SMS.

This whole initiative is about extending the _base-protocol_ (SMS) which
everyone is currently limited by.

While not universally good (carriers are still given too much power, w.r.t.
billing, etc), it's main advantage over _any other_ platform currently
available is that this is a _protocol-standard suggestion_.

It's not a walled garden like iMessage or any of those other _IM services_
(which is why no banks or similar use these services, but still use SMS).

This is something completely different, and I honestly wish more tech-startups
would think in terms of standardized protocols instead of closed services.

Creating and developing standardized protocols is what once made the internet
great and infinitely innovative. Recently the rise of closed services is what
has caused this innovation-curve to almost completely drop down to zero.

Basically we need more protocol-development. EOT.

Maybe next time we can draft a standardized protocol which wont give or even
include carriers. But for now this is a good start for creating a _standard_
IM platform available for everyone to replace SMS.

Apple should have done this ages ago with iMessage, but didn't. Props to
Google for actually putting in the effort this time around!

~~~
whyever
> Does your bank send you messages on WhatsApp? Ofcourse not. They use SMS.

I would much prefer if they used WhatsApp, because then it would not be
ridiculously insecure.

~~~
pilsetnieks
So instead of your operator, you want _Facebook_ of all the things ingesting
information about your purchases and account balance?

~~~
whyever
Well, supposedly it is end-to-end encrypted, so they don't get that
information unless they are lying. Even if, it is still better than "anyone
how cares to listen". SMS is not secure at all.

~~~
IshKebab
The content is e2e encrypted but Facebook can get all the metadata - who you
message and when.

------
djrogers
I think this is really short-sighted. I’ve got 3 kids, and they message with
bunch of their friends on tablets. Not phones connected to carriers - WiFi
tablets. This isn’t uncommon either. Why require a cell carrier to back your
messaging app? It’s just soooo limiting!

~~~
bitmapbrother
I agree. Google could have easily turned Allo into something very similar to
iMessage by just adding Google account support, default E2E encryption and SMS
fallback. It would have also worked on every device that was connected to the
Internet. But, it looks like they've decided to get into bed with the carriers
again and used some altruistic bullshit explanation that an open solution,
involving the carriers, is the right solution. This company just can't seem to
learn from its mistakes.

------
huffmsa
Why isn't there a (̶2̶0̶1̶2̶)̶ (̶2̶0̶1̶4̶)̶ (2016) tag at the end of the
title?

~~~
lainga
If the announcement is two years old, Google should be deprecating RCS
sometime around now.

------
limeblack
FYI this requires a data plan[1] which is going to be really frustrating for
those using prepaid/gophone/low income cheap plans with out a contract.

[1] [https://youtu.be/PCh-qRYMAKk?t=3m39s](https://youtu.be/PCh-
qRYMAKk?t=3m39s)

~~~
mgsk
And they can just use regular SMS?

------
hnburnsy
Weird...

[https://support.google.com/chat/?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chat/?hl=en)

"Goodbye Google Chat

Google Chat was officially shut down on June 26, 2017. To continue chatting
and video calling, try Hangouts. Learn more about Hangouts.

Google Chat, the simple Google Talk chat experience in Gmail, launched in
2005. In 2013, we began replacing Google Chat with Hangouts, while still
giving users the option to continue using Google Chat.

Hangouts offers advanced improvements over Google Chat such as group chat,
Android and iOS apps, group video calling, and integration with other Google
products."

------
cyberferret
How quaint. Is Google Fax still in late Beta and will be released next month?

But seriously - Is 'SMS replacement' even a thing now? I think I only ever
chat to my wife via SMS these days because she won't install third party apps
on her phone and has no social media accounts. All my friends, colleagues and
kids send messages to each other via about 3 different chat apps depending on
age (kids) and context.

~~~
mlok
Where are you based ? Here in France, SMS / MMS are still the most widely
used. More than any other third party app. Most of phone carriers plans here
offer unlimited sms / mms for free now, so it's pretty much THE default. It
would be interesting to see a messaging apps usage comparison, country by
country.

~~~
cyberferret
I am in Australia, and just going back through my messages list on my phone, I
can see that my wife, my massage therapist and doctor/dentist etc. are mainly
who sends me texts these days, oh, and my telco also does voice to text
translations and send the transcripts to me via SMS.

I do recall that my doctors office did offer the option of Snapchat recently,
I believe, for appointment alerts. Also, the voice to text thing, I have been
thinking of writing my own little app connected to my SIP phone system and
Amazon AWS to try and achieve the same thing, just as a little programming
exercise.

If I have to be honest, if my SMS was turned off tomorrow, there would be very
little impact on my life (as long as I installed Telegram or Snapchat on my
wife's phone).

~~~
barbs
I'm also in Australia. Most of my messaging goes through other apps, mostly
WhatsApp or FB messenger. I do have a few friends that are holding out on SMS
but mostly I just treat it as a backup service for when I don't have data.

SMS has already been replaced by far more secure and mature apps. It's good to
have it there as a primitive option though.

------
jayess
This just seems comical at this point. Google Voice, Google Talk, Google
Allo.... I thought they all were supposed to be SMS "replacements."

------
hliyan
Google Talk

Google Notebook

Google Reader

Google Buzz

Google Wave

Google Plus

Google Health

Google Knol

Google SearchWiki

Google Allo

I'm not really sure if I want to get onboard with this new thing.

~~~
benevol
Google Analytics - that thing that everybody "is used by", on every website,
and without even knowing [0] or explicit consent.

[0] techies exempt.

~~~
reitanqild
To add to that: they bought that.

It used to be called Urchin I think.

~~~
geerlingguy
Yep, that’s where the ‘UTM’ in all the query strings comes from, Urchin
Traffic Monitor I think it was. I used to have the standalone version
installed which worked locally on servers and was completely independent of
Google, but looked identical to Google Analytics at that time. Of course,
Google realized they couldn’t mine any of the tracking data from the
standalone version, so that was axed around like 2008 or 2009.

~~~
neurobashing
Urchin's original mode of operation was as a cron job that scanned your
correctly-formatted Apache access_log (via LogFormat stanza) and dumped them
into a DB. So there's issues of scale that had to be dealt with, and they
decided to just dump it and go w/ the tracking JS.

------
newscracker
Is the title misleading or am I confused? Google can only rollout its app on
stock Android for Chat (known as RCS), the supposed successor to SMS that is
(also) a carrier protocol that comes with the ubiquity and disadvantages of
SMS. Google announced recently that it has worked with several telecom
carriers around the world, Android OEMs, etc., on the implementation and
rollout of RCS. But it's not the one that's going to be doing any rollouts by
a large measure.

~~~
maym86
Yep the title is misleading.

"Google has stressed that Chat is not a new Google app. Since RCS is a
communications standard, it is up to individual mobile networks and phone-
makers to switch on the functionality."

The title should be something like: Google has started the global roll-out to
support a new messaging standard.

~~~
squeaky-clean
But Chat is still a new Google app, isn't it? RCS is the new standard, but
"Chat" is a Google app. There's a chance they could stop supporting it, and
with the next-next version of android go back to shipping an SMS messenger, or
(more believably) decide a new standard is better and ship that, dumping RCS.

To me it reads like "Google has stressed that Chrome is not a new Google app.
Since HTTP is a communications standard, it is up to individual mobile
networks and website-makers to switch on the functionality."

------
mshenfield
This is definitely going to work - it's just iMessage for Android. Google can
deploy a default version of Chat in the next one or two Android releases.
Users won't notice the difference except that SMS has some nicer features.

Google can snoop on Chats directly if the web service backing them is Google
run. Even if they can't, a better default messaging experience will take
business away from competitors like WhatsApp and Messenger.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This is definitely going to work - it's just iMessage for Android.

It's neither like iMessage nor specifically for Android.

> Google can snoop on Chats directly if the web service backing them is Google
> run.

It's not, it's (like SMS) carrier infrastructure. Chat is just an RCS client
app, RCS is the SMS replacement technology.

~~~
mshenfield
> It's neither like iMessage

It will provide a similar experience, a default messaging client that
gracefully enhances the SMS experience we're used to.

> nor specifically for Android

It's a standard, but considering Android is the biggest mobile operating
system and the second biggest has it's own version of this, and the protocol
is being pushed by the Android's creators, it's fair to say this is "for
Android", at least at first.

> It's not, it's (like SMS) carrier infrastructure. Chat is just an RCS client
> app, RCS is the SMS replacement technology.

It's possible that Google would provide services to support it, the same way
Apple provides the service for push notifications.

~~~
lloeki
> gracefully enhances the SMS experience we're used to

I'm eagerly awaiting the gracefully enhanced experience of receiving
unsolicited rich-content spam.

EDIT: Just realised this abbreviates to RCS. Pure luck.

------
benevol
Another piece in Google's mass surveillance business model.

An not even encrypted "on the surface" (as Facebook's WhatsApp):

> it does not offer encrypted messages

Not in this life.

~~~
reitanqild
> An not even encrypted "on the surface" (as Facebook's WhatsApp):

As a Telegram user who feel betrayed by and doesn't like WhatsApp, -can we try
to keep this sane?

Unless you have extraordinary proofs then WhatsApp is effectively E2E
encrypted as verified by multiple industry experts.

The current problem is not message encryption but metadata leaking to an owner
that is known to "move fast and break things", and is considered untrustworthy
by many of us.

\- that is, again, unless you have proof that their encryption is broken.

I do _not_ recommend WhatsApp as long as they are owned by Facebook and don't
have a business model that is compatible with putting users first, I just
think we should be careful about throwing around accusations.

------
romanovcode
No encryption and from Google. Thanks but no thanks.

------
sumedh
Why cant Google just stick to one messaging service?

~~~
donttrack
.. Or just being the advertising company they really are. Turns out it is
really hard to be a tech company, when the primary target is to spy on you and
not create actual useful products.

------
jacksmith21006
Hope this catches on. Now have a pixel 2 XL which I love but still carry an
iPhone mostly for iMessages.

------
MistahKoala
Is this something that users will have to opt in to to use or will it be a
seamless integration with existing applications? i.e., will it require the
download of a new app or will it just be something that extends Android's
existing messaging app?

------
exabrial
Maybe Google's strategy is: get nice messaging into the market first as a
fallback. Then we'll push Allo again and we can fall back to RCS...

The carriers shouldn't be involved in messaging at all, sigh. SMS was a
downgrade from AIM and ICQ.

------
jgresty
From all the articles I have read on this, it is never mentioned if this will
be in AOSP or part of Google Play Services. I really hope they allow any app
to use RCS messages instead of keeping it in their own walled garden.

------
Jonnax
I think RCS has been available for a while. I know my Samsung Phone supports
it.

------
pmlnr
In other news, Google wants to read your SMS messages.

------
jannes
I have a prediction for this: Dead on arrival

------
coryfklein
Google's messaging strategy is starting to sound more and more like that XKCD
[1]

    
    
        How Standards Proliferate 
        (See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.) 
    
        Situation: 
        There are 14 competing standards. 
    
        Cueball: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases. 
        Ponytail: Yeah! 
    
        Soon: 
        Situation: There are 15 competing standards.
     

[1] [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

------
dingo_bat
Let's just everybody install whatsapp and put an end to this stupidity please.

~~~
falcor84
Yes, let's perhaps create a law forcing everyone to provide Facebook with some
more of their (meta)data /s

Perhaps in some utopia, where we could force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and
have it be managed instead as a non-profit sponsored by our benevolent world
government...

~~~
dingo_bat
It's better than giving literally all our data to Google.

------
deathtrader666
... to be shut down 18 months later because of lack of traction.

~~~
wereHamster
RCS is a GSM standard (like SMS). So there is nothing to shut down. It's up to
the carriers whether they want to support it or not. And support seems to be
ok worldwide:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services)

~~~
Crontab
I think he was talking about the new messaging service - as Google have a
history of turning things off.

~~~
robteix
That's the point though: this isn't a new messaging service, it is a protocol
standard that will be implemented by carriers, not Google. It is not thing
that Google will shut down because there is nothing to shut down.

We have better alternatives (Signal, WhatsApp...) for those who care. Those
who don't will continue using SMS, and for those, RCS is a good step forward.

~~~
corobo
Bit of a technicality that though isn't it. An alternate way of saying it is
"Android to stop supporting RCS messages in the messaging app"

------
kanishkdudeja
Any link for the APK yet? Would love to try this out!

------
north_east_dev
How long until they abandon this one?

------
nsbq71
iOS does not support RCS so it's dead on arrival.

~~~
erikb
Trolling right? If my phone can, and 86% of other smart phone users can then
I'd say it doesn't really matter if iphone users can as well. They could buy a
smart phone, too.

~~~
nsbq71
Not really trolling, think about it. Here in Europe we all have whatsapp that
works right. Why would we switch to RCS, which is an inferior replacement (no
E2E for example), and that does not even support all major platforms?

Back when RCS (under the name of Joyn) was about to be released everybody
dreamt of switching to it, thinking that maybe, just maybe, telcos would make
RCS free, so you wouldn't have to buy data to chat, like you have to do with
whatsapp (back then many people didn't have data). That never happened
evidently, and now most people have data because it's gotten much cheaper. So
there's no way we will leave whatsapp, and yes RCS is dead.

~~~
vegardx
I don't know a single person that uses WhatsApp, and I live in Europe. We have
a tendency to think that everyone adopts the same things, especially when it
comes to technology. This has been demonstrated to not be true multiple times.

It'd be cool if we had a standard that everyone could use, like SMS, just that
supported larger messages. Oh wait...

~~~
Double_a_92
What do your people use? Facebook chat, Telegram...?

~~~
vegardx
Kind of besides the point, but Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and iMessage has
very good penetration, people usually have two of the three. And everyone just
fall back on SMS when if they need to.

~~~
Double_a_92
Do they really use Snapchat for writing? I've tried to use it besides picture
sharing and it's really cumbersome... It's really slow to startup (compared to
other apps), the UI is confusing, and old messages get deleted...

~~~
vegardx
I have no clue, as I don't use it. I imagine most people use it for sharing
pictures and use other apps for chatting.

------
na85
Neat. I look forward to seeing an awesome post-mortem in 2 years when they
abandon this project.

------
erikb
It is so obvious that it will be a failure.

I know like 4 big Google projects and all seem to be failures (Kubernetes
being the most successful, but still in hype so nobody realizes yet how
mediocre it is). Right now it seems a good time to start working on a Google
killer.

~~~
Crash0v3rid3
Can you clarify on what is mediocre about Kubernetes?

~~~
erikb
Could you clarify what is not? The only advantage over rolling out docker
images by yourself is the scheduler. And if I consider what we wasted amounts
of time we already in my team I'd say in that time we could have written our
own docker container that can schedule containers on (or from) other hosts.

You can easily see that a solution is mediocre if you see that it doesn't
attempt to solve any of the hard problems (in this case networking, network
debugging, storage, performance) while requiring lots of overhead to do a
trivial thing (e.g. here are my static html files, no go and host these).

It works okay on AWS/GoogleCloud but at least on AWS you already have all the
features of k8s on IaaS level. On everything else it runs shitty and you spend
more human resources on getting it to work / keeping it working than when you
do the scheduling yourself.

------
swarnie_
So this is Googles attempt to compete with Whatsapp but only on Andriod? I
can't see my friendship groups segmenting in two depending on choice of mobile
platform.

> However, it will be up to mobile operators to enable the service and it does
> not offer encrypted messages.

Yep this will kill it off in short order.

~~~
saagarjha
> So this is Googles attempt to compete with Whatsapp but only on Andriod?

RCS may have it’s flawa but this is not one of them. It isn’t an Android-
specific protocol.

------
dosycorp
Relative to LINE/WhatsApp/Messenger/WeChat/Hangouts -- does anyone use SMS?

If big G really thinks it's going to "replace SMS" ( and they can leverage
their platform to roll it out / lock in ) then good luck to them, maybe they
_can_ replace SMS.

But so what?

SMS was not the killer messaging app.

Those things are elsewhere.

Why does big G have an aversion to big acquisitions?

FB buys WhatsApp & IG -- Great moves

MS has made some big purchases

But the big G seems to purchase, but only for small dollar amounts
(relatively). Same with Apple.

Even tho these two corps have (don't they?) big loads of cash.

I think it's technical arrogance. Big G and Apple are used to being revered as
King S&&t of their tech.

So they think they can build it themselves. Ahahaha, sure, you can BUILD
it...but can you get product/market fit to where it _matters_ as a
replacement?

I feel sorry for them. I think Big G and Apple obviously do great, but
couldn't they do better to just narrow their focus. Even tho FB is f^&&d up in
a lot of ways, one thing to really admire about their business is their narrow
narrow focus. Even Oculus makes sense because Zuck sees a "Ready Player 1"
world as the future ( with him as God Emperor, of course..heh ).

~~~
Eridrus
> Why does big G have an aversion to big acquisitions?

This is Nonsense, Google acquired Motorola Mobility, Nest, DoubleClick,
YouTube, Waze, DeepMind and lastly the HTC phone division.

This is more true of Apple, but they did buy Beats for 3bn.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

~~~
dosycorp
Sure ok. I don't know. Just making stuff up.

------
quark33
I know in Europe, most phone plans have limited SMS, so often Whatsapp is
preferred which uses data or Wifi.

So if this uses Data, how will this be advantageous for US users who have
plans with limited data, but unlimited SMS?

