7 ms·

Google Jibe: Better carrier messaging for everyone

93 points by hswolff 11y ago

AndrewDucker 11y ago
It's interesting that carrier messaging continues to be upgraded, and that open protocols for chat aren't entirely dead.
smonff 11y ago
I asked for privacy and decentralization, Google gave "clouded" SMS.
lgleason 11y ago
Of note: Project FI has been plagued with short SMS issues for the past year. Some are reporting that this has been fixed, but does concern me if Google is going to get into this space. I'm saying this as someone who is a Android advocate and developer.
- dschnurr 11y ago
  Guessing they fixed it–I've been a Fi user for the past month and haven't noticed any issues, if anything it's been way faster and more reliable than VZW since it goes over wifi now.
- ddispaltro 11y ago
  It's fixed for me but I definitely had the issue when I was onboarded. It's because I came from T-Mobile, so they had to "reset" the account and then everything was good to go.
  - grouma 11y ago
    I had the exact same experience coming from T-Mobile as well. No issues after the reset and enjoying the service so far, especially when I travel internationally.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  I had a bunch of shortcode issues too -- contacted support and they gave me some canned 'its an smpt gateway issue, we cant fix'. Checked online and found that that is incorrect, called support again and linked the support forum discussions and they escalated me to a tech who reset something -- I have since received shortcode texts.
gonvaled 11y ago
How does this relate / compete with Whatsapp?
dheera 11y ago
Ick. I wish we could kill SMS/Whatsapp/Wechat/LINE already and just do everything over e-mail or some other cross-platform, multi-login protocol. I hate being tied up to one device to message people. I change devices on the order of minutes, move over the course of a day between a few locations that all have devices I own, and don't regularly carry or look at my cell phone if I am already staring at something bigger (e.g. tablet/laptop/desktop/TV). I enjoy e-mail/FB/skype/et al.'s ability to freely switch devices, switch OSes and continue your conversations extremely smoothly without any barriers. I want information to move with me, not with a silly phone.
- stann 11y ago
  Have you tried Telegram?
  - dheera 11y ago
    Hadn't heard about it. Just checked it out, and it looks interesting. Unfortunately, due to network effects and my social circle, 99% of the people I know pretty much only use either Wechat, Facebook, or e-mail, but I look forward to seeing something disrupt this space with something better, more functional, cross-platform, and multi-login. It would be killer if Telegram could interoperate with at least 1 or 2 of the other services, which would allow it to ramp up adoption. Unfortunately Wechat is very insistent about not allowing 3rd-party applications to use their messaging protocol, and Facebook seems to have closed their XMPP interface as well. I would guess Whatsapp probably has the same attitude. In this respect I really, really miss the days of Pidgin and those other similar applications which used to be able to put MSN/ICQ/AIM/QQ/Yahoo/Zephyr all on one interface. That seems impossible with the state of mobile apps now.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      > In this respect I really, really miss the days of Pidgin and those other similar applications... Given that -AFAIK- Signal documents its protocols, I expect that there will be Pidgin support for it not long after the Signal desktop client moves out of population-limited beta and is officially released. But yeah. It's a goddamn crying shame that this new crop of devs have decided to not only reinvent Instant Messaging, but to do it in such a way that leaves us back in the same situation we were in in the 1990's. [0] That wheel keeps turning and periodically crushes us all, I guess. [0] Of course, one could do the very same thing that was done back in the 1990's and reverse engineer the new wave of chat protocols. We still possess general purpose computers that can be used to snatch the plaintext of conversations that they're a party to that are sent over encrypted channels.
arrty88 11y ago
Finally, disruption of the basic SMS system for all users on the protocol / carrier level.
habosa 11y ago
As a long-time SMS user, getting widespread RCS support is the biggest future mobile phone innovation I am looking forward to. SMS is wonderful because you can send a message to any mobile phone user regardless of their nationality, operating system, hardware, carrier, etc. However it has a few major flaws: cost, speed, lack of group messaging, limited multimedia support. The shortcomings of SMS have fueled the rise of IP messenger apps like WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Hangouts, and iMessage. These all have the features we want, but their major flaw are arguably even more severe: total lock-in and lack of interoperability. Once you have a majority of your communication networks on one of those protocols, you become dependent on a single for-profit company for your communication. Look at what happens to iOS users trying to switch to Android: iMessage blocks their communication for months afterward. RCS will give us all the benefits of iMessage or WhatsApp but without being locked in to a single company's network or having to get all of your friends/family to adopt one or the other.
- dheera 11y ago
  > total lock-in You have these problems with carriers as well. They're technically interoperable but they hit you with prohibitively expensive rates if you try to do anything international. Carriers are also effectively government-controlled monopolies or biopolies in a lot of places so users end up locked-in anyway. > lack of interoperability Again, you have these problems. Yes, phones are interoperable with phones, but they're not interoperable with anything else. IP-based messaging apps have the potential for phones to interoperate with computers, tablets, VR googles, smartwatches, and whatever else you want (although not all do at the moment -- Wechat and Whatsapp suck in particular -- but at least they have the potential, and some actually do interoperate with non-phone devices -- such as Facebook and Hangouts). Phones may not necessarily be the center of everything 10 years down the road. I'd rather the freedom to innovate be with the software companies, not the operators of one particular infrastructure.
  - unsignedint 11y ago
    > You have these problems with carriers as well. They're technically interoperable but they hit you with prohibitively expensive rates if you try to do anything international. And very poor transparency on those short codes... I once got some extra charges, because of a shortcode (it was actually Yahoo!) I happened use was international. (No way to tell that by the number alone.) It was surprising to hear from the carrier I didn't have any way to block international text, too.
eximius 11y ago
Anybody have a good source on what the heck RCS is? I've never heard of it until now. I will google also, but I bet someone knows of an introduction they'd recommend.
- unsignedint 11y ago
  Rich Communication Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
  - easytiger 11y ago
    That has no details of the technicalities
- theseatoms 11y ago
  http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/22/google-rcs/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/22/google-rcs/
- profeta 11y ago
  it is an attempt to standardize what whatsapp made popular: instant messaging with authentication based on phone number. the spec even includes the big-brother way of you having to hand over your contacts to pair the phone numbers to other users that whatsapp sadly made the norm.
- danyork 11y ago
  RCS is the legacy telcos ongoing attempt to try to somehow get into the messaging game that all of the Internet-based communications app are doing (WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Line, Kik, Skype, iMessage, etc.). Basically, they'd like all their SMS revenue back! Dean Bubley had a great analysis - "Google + GSMA announcement on RCS is no gamechanger" : http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/google-gsma-announcement-on-rcs-is-no.html http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/google-gsma...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
zellyn 11y ago
One big question: will carriers still charge exorbitant per-message fees? And one huge question: will iOS support RCS?
- bsharitt 11y ago
  Are there still companies that still charge per message fees?
  - neves 11y ago
    Sure, specially if you have a prepaid phone (very common in third world countries)
  - gurrone 11y ago
    Depending on the contract they do. Often enough it's the GSM modem paging someone for alarms that holds a SIM with some old corporate contract that has no flatrate. And you'd violate the contract if you exchange it for some private contract SIM with all inclusive SMS.
  - moreati 11y ago
    Yes, every mobile phone operator in the UK charges for SMS and MMS if you're PAYG user. Users on contracts typically get 1000s of free SMS per month, but I'm not aware of any contracts that have inclusive MMS.
ChrisArchitect 11y ago
all of the messaging apps WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat etc are terrible in that they owe a lot of their rise due to users lack of comprehension of sms vs IP and carrier lockin etc etc. However - google and messaging is just a messy, and they're pushing this now? How about sort out your Messenger and Hangouts mess and get all of that consolidated
- esolyt 11y ago
  More likely, they owe their rise to lack of an account creation process (no username and password).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ignoramous 11y ago
This is a clear move against WhatsApp? With Jibe, Google is going for the kill, 'cause WhatsApp just went life-time free for everyone with an eye on earning revenue from their enterprise APIs.
ungzd 11y ago
Another version of MMS so carriers can charge per message and organize paid scam services with ringtones and "RCS dating chats"? They're living in 2001.
Fundlab 11y ago
So basically this will only install on android. No?
- OJFord 11y ago
  No. Think SMS, not Messages app.
Veratyr 11y ago
Wow, RCS seems pretty bad from a privacy standpoint. The spec is available on the GSMA website [0]. The relevant section is 2.13.1.3 of "Rich Communication Suite 6.0 Advanced Communications Services and Client Specification Version 7.0-final draft" available in the specification ZIP. TL;DR: Encryption seems to be included but for voice and video only. They have _deliberately_ compromised messaging security to be vulnerable to interception. "SRTP [RFC3711] may be used to provide per message authentication, integrity protection and encryption for both RTP and RTCP streams involved in real-time video and voice sessions." [...] "[3GPP TS 33.328] defines two modes of operation for SDES/SRTP: e2ae (end-to-access edge) mode and e2e (end-to-end) mode." "[...] the RCS client may try e2e [...]" And: <Basic description of the messaging protocol> "When using MSRPoTLS, and with the following two objectives allow compliance with legal interception procedures, the TLS authentication shall be based on self-signed certificates and the MSRP encrypted connection shall be terminated in an element of the Service Provider network providing service to that UE. Mutual authentication shall be applied as defined in [RFC4572]." [0] http://www.gsma.com/network2020/specs-and-product-docs/ http://www.gsma.com/network2020/specs-and-product-docs/
- maxerickson 11y ago
  There are a bunch of customers that are countries that have a tight hold on their telecom industry. Which I don't mean to offer as a justification, just as an observation that making allowances for "compliance with legal interception procedures" is not anything new for that industry.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  I think RCS is just bad since it has been around since 2007 with "little or no take-up" as mentioned in Wikipedia.
Nagyman 11y ago
Is this why Hangouts recently started advertising the Google Messaging app instead of the opposite? For the longest time, I was using Messaging but Google kept pushing me to Hangouts.
mmanfrin 11y ago
Given the clusterfuck between Hangouts and Messenger, and the painful process of getting Google Fi to work with shortcodes, I have little confidence in Google getting texting right. I want to be proved wrong, but I am not liking their track record here.
carapace 11y ago
Light grey, thin, sans-serif body text, O how I hate you.
randomname2 11y ago
My sympathy goes out to the Google engineers who had to write a new wiretap friendly texting app. I hope the snacks & massages are worth it. https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/701854843057610752 https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/701854843057610752
bobisme 11y ago
`font-weight: 100` and `color: #757575` for body text? It's barely readable on a retina display. It's an eyesore on my PC.

93 points by hswolff 11y ago

It's interesting that carrier messaging continues to be upgraded, and that open protocols for chat aren't entirely dead.

smonff 11y ago

I asked for privacy and decentralization, Google gave "clouded" SMS.

lgleason 11y ago

Of note: Project FI has been plagued with short SMS issues for the past year. Some are reporting that this has been fixed, but does concern me if Google is going to get into this space. I'm saying this as someone who is a Android advocate and developer.

dschnurr 11y ago
Guessing they fixed it–I've been a Fi user for the past month and haven't noticed any issues, if anything it's been way faster and more reliable than VZW since it goes over wifi now.
ddispaltro 11y ago
It's fixed for me but I definitely had the issue when I was onboarded. It's because I came from T-Mobile, so they had to "reset" the account and then everything was good to go.
- grouma 11y ago
  I had the exact same experience coming from T-Mobile as well. No issues after the reset and enjoying the service so far, especially when I travel internationally.
mmanfrin 11y ago
I had a bunch of shortcode issues too -- contacted support and they gave me some canned 'its an smpt gateway issue, we cant fix'. Checked online and found that that is incorrect, called support again and linked the support forum discussions and they escalated me to a tech who reset something -- I have since received shortcode texts.

gonvaled 11y ago

How does this relate / compete with Whatsapp?

dheera 11y ago

Ick. I wish we could kill SMS/Whatsapp/Wechat/LINE already and just do everything over e-mail or some other cross-platform, multi-login protocol. I hate being tied up to one device to message people. I change devices on the order of minutes, move over the course of a day between a few locations that all have devices I own, and don't regularly carry or look at my cell phone if I am already staring at something bigger (e.g. tablet/laptop/desktop/TV). I enjoy e-mail/FB/skype/et al.'s ability to freely switch devices, switch OSes and continue your conversations extremely smoothly without any barriers. I want information to move with me, not with a silly phone.

stann 11y ago
Have you tried Telegram?
- dheera 11y ago
  Hadn't heard about it. Just checked it out, and it looks interesting. Unfortunately, due to network effects and my social circle, 99% of the people I know pretty much only use either Wechat, Facebook, or e-mail, but I look forward to seeing something disrupt this space with something better, more functional, cross-platform, and multi-login. It would be killer if Telegram could interoperate with at least 1 or 2 of the other services, which would allow it to ramp up adoption. Unfortunately Wechat is very insistent about not allowing 3rd-party applications to use their messaging protocol, and Facebook seems to have closed their XMPP interface as well. I would guess Whatsapp probably has the same attitude. In this respect I really, really miss the days of Pidgin and those other similar applications which used to be able to put MSN/ICQ/AIM/QQ/Yahoo/Zephyr all on one interface. That seems impossible with the state of mobile apps now.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > In this respect I really, really miss the days of Pidgin and those other similar applications... Given that -AFAIK- Signal documents its protocols, I expect that there will be Pidgin support for it not long after the Signal desktop client moves out of population-limited beta and is officially released. But yeah. It's a goddamn crying shame that this new crop of devs have decided to not only reinvent Instant Messaging, but to do it in such a way that leaves us back in the same situation we were in in the 1990's. [0] That wheel keeps turning and periodically crushes us all, I guess. [0] Of course, one could do the very same thing that was done back in the 1990's and reverse engineer the new wave of chat protocols. We still possess general purpose computers that can be used to snatch the plaintext of conversations that they're a party to that are sent over encrypted channels.

arrty88 11y ago

Finally, disruption of the basic SMS system for all users on the protocol / carrier level.

habosa 11y ago

As a long-time SMS user, getting widespread RCS support is the biggest future mobile phone innovation I am looking forward to. SMS is wonderful because you can send a message to any mobile phone user regardless of their nationality, operating system, hardware, carrier, etc. However it has a few major flaws: cost, speed, lack of group messaging, limited multimedia support. The shortcomings of SMS have fueled the rise of IP messenger apps like WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Hangouts, and iMessage. These all have the features we want, but their major flaw are arguably even more severe: total lock-in and lack of interoperability. Once you have a majority of your communication networks on one of those protocols, you become dependent on a single for-profit company for your communication. Look at what happens to iOS users trying to switch to Android: iMessage blocks their communication for months afterward. RCS will give us all the benefits of iMessage or WhatsApp but without being locked in to a single company's network or having to get all of your friends/family to adopt one or the other.

dheera 11y ago
> total lock-in You have these problems with carriers as well. They're technically interoperable but they hit you with prohibitively expensive rates if you try to do anything international. Carriers are also effectively government-controlled monopolies or biopolies in a lot of places so users end up locked-in anyway. > lack of interoperability Again, you have these problems. Yes, phones are interoperable with phones, but they're not interoperable with anything else. IP-based messaging apps have the potential for phones to interoperate with computers, tablets, VR googles, smartwatches, and whatever else you want (although not all do at the moment -- Wechat and Whatsapp suck in particular -- but at least they have the potential, and some actually do interoperate with non-phone devices -- such as Facebook and Hangouts). Phones may not necessarily be the center of everything 10 years down the road. I'd rather the freedom to innovate be with the software companies, not the operators of one particular infrastructure.
- unsignedint 11y ago
  > You have these problems with carriers as well. They're technically interoperable but they hit you with prohibitively expensive rates if you try to do anything international. And very poor transparency on those short codes... I once got some extra charges, because of a shortcode (it was actually Yahoo!) I happened use was international. (No way to tell that by the number alone.) It was surprising to hear from the carrier I didn't have any way to block international text, too.

eximius 11y ago

Anybody have a good source on what the heck RCS is? I've never heard of it until now. I will google also, but I bet someone knows of an introduction they'd recommend.

unsignedint 11y ago
Rich Communication Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
- easytiger 11y ago
  That has no details of the technicalities
theseatoms 11y ago
http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/22/google-rcs/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/22/google-rcs/
profeta 11y ago
it is an attempt to standardize what whatsapp made popular: instant messaging with authentication based on phone number. the spec even includes the big-brother way of you having to hand over your contacts to pair the phone numbers to other users that whatsapp sadly made the norm.
danyork 11y ago
RCS is the legacy telcos ongoing attempt to try to somehow get into the messaging game that all of the Internet-based communications app are doing (WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Line, Kik, Skype, iMessage, etc.). Basically, they'd like all their SMS revenue back! Dean Bubley had a great analysis - "Google + GSMA announcement on RCS is no gamechanger" : http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/google-gsma-announcement-on-rcs-is-no.html http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/google-gsma...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago

zellyn 11y ago

One big question: will carriers still charge exorbitant per-message fees? And one huge question: will iOS support RCS?

bsharitt 11y ago
Are there still companies that still charge per message fees?
- neves 11y ago
  Sure, specially if you have a prepaid phone (very common in third world countries)
- gurrone 11y ago
  Depending on the contract they do. Often enough it's the GSM modem paging someone for alarms that holds a SIM with some old corporate contract that has no flatrate. And you'd violate the contract if you exchange it for some private contract SIM with all inclusive SMS.
- moreati 11y ago
  Yes, every mobile phone operator in the UK charges for SMS and MMS if you're PAYG user. Users on contracts typically get 1000s of free SMS per month, but I'm not aware of any contracts that have inclusive MMS.

ChrisArchitect 11y ago

all of the messaging apps WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat etc are terrible in that they owe a lot of their rise due to users lack of comprehension of sms vs IP and carrier lockin etc etc. However - google and messaging is just a messy, and they're pushing this now? How about sort out your Messenger and Hangouts mess and get all of that consolidated

esolyt 11y ago
More likely, they owe their rise to lack of an account creation process (no username and password).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ignoramous 11y ago

This is a clear move against WhatsApp? With Jibe, Google is going for the kill, 'cause WhatsApp just went life-time free for everyone with an eye on earning revenue from their enterprise APIs.

ungzd 11y ago

Another version of MMS so carriers can charge per message and organize paid scam services with ringtones and "RCS dating chats"? They're living in 2001.

Fundlab 11y ago

So basically this will only install on android. No?

OJFord 11y ago
No. Think SMS, not Messages app.

Veratyr 11y ago

Wow, RCS seems pretty bad from a privacy standpoint. The spec is available on the GSMA website [0]. The relevant section is 2.13.1.3 of "Rich Communication Suite 6.0 Advanced Communications Services and Client Specification Version 7.0-final draft" available in the specification ZIP. TL;DR: Encryption seems to be included but for voice and video only. They have _deliberately_ compromised messaging security to be vulnerable to interception. "SRTP [RFC3711] may be used to provide per message authentication, integrity protection and encryption for both RTP and RTCP streams involved in real-time video and voice sessions." [...] "[3GPP TS 33.328] defines two modes of operation for SDES/SRTP: e2ae (end-to-access edge) mode and e2e (end-to-end) mode." "[...] the RCS client may try e2e [...]" And: <Basic description of the messaging protocol> "When using MSRPoTLS, and with the following two objectives allow compliance with legal interception procedures, the TLS authentication shall be based on self-signed certificates and the MSRP encrypted connection shall be terminated in an element of the Service Provider network providing service to that UE. Mutual authentication shall be applied as defined in [RFC4572]." [0] http://www.gsma.com/network2020/specs-and-product-docs/ http://www.gsma.com/network2020/specs-and-product-docs/

maxerickson 11y ago
There are a bunch of customers that are countries that have a tight hold on their telecom industry. Which I don't mean to offer as a justification, just as an observation that making allowances for "compliance with legal interception procedures" is not anything new for that industry.
PaulHoule 11y ago
I think RCS is just bad since it has been around since 2007 with "little or no take-up" as mentioned in Wikipedia.

Nagyman 11y ago

Is this why Hangouts recently started advertising the Google Messaging app instead of the opposite? For the longest time, I was using Messaging but Google kept pushing me to Hangouts.

mmanfrin 11y ago

Given the clusterfuck between Hangouts and Messenger, and the painful process of getting Google Fi to work with shortcodes, I have little confidence in Google getting texting right. I want to be proved wrong, but I am not liking their track record here.

carapace 11y ago

Light grey, thin, sans-serif body text, O how I hate you.

randomname2 11y ago

My sympathy goes out to the Google engineers who had to write a new wiretap friendly texting app. I hope the snacks & massages are worth it. https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/701854843057610752 https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/701854843057610752

bobisme 11y ago

`font-weight: 100` and `color: #757575` for body text? It's barely readable on a retina display. It's an eyesore on my PC.