More Confusing Google Messaging

So it continues. The journey of Google's confusing messaging platforms lives on. Through a quick search, I've written about this issue over 8 times in the past 5 years; it doesn't seem to have gotten much better.

The push for a default Android messaging app continues. The Messenger application has been renamed to Android Messages. Google hopes that RCS (Rich Communication Standard) messaging will replace SMS messaging with read receipts (seeing if someone has read your message), higher quality photos, better video quality, and more. The struggle of getting manufacturers of making Android Messages the default messaging app will continue, particularly without buy-in with their largest Android manufacturer Samsung. (I've written that not having consistent and standard configurations has hurt the Android experience) It also doesn't help in the US that none of the major three carriers have agreed to support RCS.

As for Allo, Google's competitor to WhatsApp, there hasn't been much traction. Allo dropped out of the Top 500 applications on the Play Store at the end of January. My last message sent using Allo was in the beginning of December and that was only when Allo released Star Wars Rogue One stickers. I only had five conversations on Allo and it was mostly using it because of the novelty of Google Assistant. Allo never even made it on my home screen.

Allo could soon replace Hangouts as a Googler showed a desktop version of Allo on Twitter. Not having desktop support is one of the major reasons I haven't switched to Allo, especially when Hangouts has desktop support and video chat.

One way Google can further convince users to switch to Allo is integrate SMS/MMS/RCS into Allo as well. Then, Allo could possibly be the default messaging application of Android. Google Assistant would be significantly more useful if it is integrated with most of (if not all) your messaging services.

As you can tell, I've been frustrated by Google messaging platform.

Also, Google Spaces did not pan out as well as Google would have hoped. Less than a year in and Google is shutting the service down.

It certainly does not help that the Google Spaces site description is:

Google Spaces wasn't very publicized and the use cases just were not frequent enough. It didn't really offer a distinct solution to anything that couldn't be done through a group chat.

With Google I/O in May, maybe we'll see a more unified messaging platform. Though, taking a look to past experiences, we'll probably see more confusion.

There is no doubt that Apple has had an overall better messaging platform than Android. And if I were to switch to iPhone, messaging would probably be the most substantial reason why I switch.