or abandon it to die

a tactic Google is supremely familiar with

I like that my Apple messages client can now participate in encrypted RCS chats. It’s still green boxes though. No competition, just raised the floor a little from SMS as the basic service

Google didn’t develop RCS, GSMA did. All google did was purchase the startup that actually developed a good implementation of it.

This isnt some gatekeeping exercise from google, they had nothing to do with RCS’s initial design and release. The carriers are entirely to blame for dragging their feet, although some are finally implementing their own servers (China is entirely RCS without google).

As for “federate it, decentralise it”, thats how it already is. Its called “hubbing”, but its basically federation. The networks run their server, and the federate messages between them. It isn’t centralised at all.

Never said they developed it. They bought it for a reason though.

Can we self-host a RCS server and hub with all the RCS network?

They bought an implementation of RCS, the standard is still open. They even sell there implementation to a few telcos.

You cant self host it because you need to be a telco, it has telco specific protocols.

Your looking for a conspiracy/monopoly that for once, doesnt exist due to Google being malicious. It exists because telcos are shit.

Two entities can be shit, and also malicious, at the same time.

Google has historically done a lot of good things. Today they simply do evil, but pushing for RCS adoption when telcos refused to is one of those good things they did.

You can still hate Google and want them to disappear, I do, but that doesn’t mean you automatically hate everything ever touched by them. Their motivation may have been strictly to compete with Apple, but e2ee messages are a net positive if you must use it. Use signal and matrix when you can, use RCS when you must.

Google didn’t buy it, it’s an open standard.

What google did is host RCS infrastructure and have the worlds most popular messaging client.

You can absolutely setup an RCS server, build an FCS client that has the appropriate keys and access, put RCS relays in important peering points a over the world, and roll that out to millions of ppl yourself.

Sort of like nuclear power; you could probably build a reactor yourself, but it’s a heavy lift plus there are players that don’t want you to.

So, what you’re saying is… no. Gotcha.

I know what you mean, it’s frustrating that this happened by google being the 800lb gorilla.

Same thing happened to email, we now only have a handful of providers even though email is an open standard.