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If you're an iPhone fan,
one advantage you've had for a long time
in your fanboy battles with Android users
is the existence of iMessage.
It's not only faster than traditional SMS,
but it also allows you to add tons of effects
and options to your texts
if your chat partner is also on iOS.
Android's default Messenger app is, by contrast,
your basic SMS client.
And if you've ever received so much as a small photo over it,
you know that it can make 56K motives
from the ancient 1990s feel fast.
But all of this is about to change
now that Google is set to push an SMS alternative
to the masses.
It's called Rich Communication Services, or chat.
Not to be confused with the instant messaging components
of Hangouts that people often call Google Chat,
or any of the other galactically confusing
brand names that Google has been using
for text-based communication services over the years.
The main idea behind chat is to add functionality
that SMS doesn't currently support.
Not only will it remove the annoying 160-character limit,
but it'll come with plenty of other iMessage-like features.
You'll be able to chat with multiple people in one session,
share videos and GIFs,
see when the other party is typing
and has read your message, share files, and more.
And it'll work over a data connection
instead of the much slower SMS.
Unlike iMessage, though, which is a supplementary service
provided by Apple's servers,
remember your iPhone can still send normal SMS
to your scrub green bubble friends,
chat is meant to be a replacement for SMS
and therefore has to be supported by your wireless carrier.
And although Google appears quite serious
about building its base of partners,
adoption by mobile networks has been relatively slow.
But like, why is Google getting involved with this
in the first place?
They have their own database communications apps already,
so why aren't they focusing on those instead?
Well, quite simply, they did.
But whatever the issues were,
branding, bugs, a lack of enticing features,
Google's various chat apps
haven't become hits with mobile users.
In fact, Hangouts is going to become more enterprise-focused
in the near future,
with Google conceding that competing alternatives
like Facebook Messenger have simply become more popular
with smartphone users.
I guess they just couldn't block Zuckerberg's store.
Oh.
So by backing chat instead,
Google can make rich messaging an integral part
of the Android experience for its billions of users.
Even the ones who aren't tech savvy
or don't think that they should have to
install a third-party app for that,
as long as the carrier supports it.
And just like iMessage,
if you send a message to a phone
or through a network that doesn't support chat,
the message will simply send as SMS,
similar to the popular iOS experience.
Sounds good then, right?
So when can we expect to start chatting?
Well, Sprint and T-Mobile in the United States
already support it,
with carriers in the EU and Latin America
expect it to follow relatively soon.
And Google says it's going to aggressively roll it out
to the rest of the world over the next couple of years.
But exact timelines will depend on the effectiveness
of Google's sales pitch to carriers
that chat is a worthwhile investment for their customers
because of its broad device support.
And that's a pretty cool pitch
because apparently it's not even out of the question
for Apple devices to support it down the road.
But, right now, Google's sales pitch to Apple is that,
what would that mean for iMessage?
Personally, I have no idea,
but don't let that stop you from engaging
in the usual Android versus iOS flame wars
with an extra helping of baseless speculation
down in the comments section.
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