Ah, it's that time of the week again, Google are launching a new chat app https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/20/chat-googles-big-shot-at-killing-apples-imessage
Not to be confused with Google Chat, which was discontinued a couple of years ago in favour of turning Hangouts into a unified messaging app, a course since completely reversed
Oh hang on, Google Chat actually hasn't been a name they've used yet, I was thinking Google Talk
@theoutrider
Google used "Google Chat" already... https://support.google.com/chat/
"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."
@theoutrider
So Google Chat was also Google Talk which is now Hangouts (originally Google+ only), but now retargeted for "enterprise" use while Allo (& Duo) are for personal use but now "on pause" for developing a new Google Chat, which is RCS (but not versioning) but also known as Google Jibe which is basically SMS 3.0, & is in Android Messages (but not the old AOSP based Messages, which was discontinued, but a new one), which is the SMS client… which might be Google Chat?
@bobjonkman SMS isn't a silo and it's lasted a lot longer than 3 years. Google's only involvement is getting carriers to adopt 1 standard for RCS instead of building 55 different ones; it's just "Chat", not "Google Chat".
@bobjonkman Hmm, but there are plenty of alternative SMS providers like Twilio or those "free SMS" apps you can download from an app store and possibly pay a cheap subscription to. Even Google offers Google Voice. The only difference between SMS and IP chat is having to cross over a carrier at some point (a moot point with RCS, which is also over IP).
Since the Universal Profile specs are available for anyone, it's possible we can see third-party RCS apps like we do for SMS apps.