They tried to push one years and years ago (combining SMS with one of their existing non-SMS messaging services) and I had to manually upgrade back to the prior version of their messaging app to get anything to work properly again, including SMS. Total disaster, broken as hell.
When I switched to iOS, that experience gave me a special appreciation for how smoothly iMessage/Messages works.
> When I switched to iOS, that experience gave me a special appreciation for how smoothly iMessage/Messages works.
But that's selective recall too - for YEARS iMessage was horrible. You had an iOS device but no longer? Good luck getting any of your friends messages who were still on iOS.
Apple ended up having to build a portal just to allow users to properly de-register their numbers from iMessage so they could receive messages from Apple users again.
It’s not. My actual experience was that basic, happy-path usage of Google’s effort failed at such a high rate that I couldn’t use it for anything. It was too unreliable.
Happy-path use of Messages, when I switched, was much smoother.
I haven’t tried to switch from iOS to Android so I don’t have that experience to recall.
When I switched to iOS, that experience gave me a special appreciation for how smoothly iMessage/Messages works.