Google finally drops Chat in favor of a simpler RCS naming for Messages

While I really wish I could say Google had things figured out with the transition away from both Hangouts and Allo in favor of RCS messaging as its primary focus, I’m still not sure that was the right thing to do. I won’t rehash all of the arguments about why that is except to say that iMessage is an anomaly that can’t really be replicated and a more-standard IM with tacked-on, standard SMS/MMS/RCS support would have been a better option in my opinion. Why couldn’t we have just kept Allo and added SMS/MMS/RCS on the side of it?

Regardless, Google Messages is what we have right now, and regardless of my thoughts on some of the Google-made predecessors that died on the way, Messages is a pretty solid platform if it had a clearer focus. For the time being, we’re in a weird spot where people use all sorts of messaging platforms and the idea that tying those messages to a phone number makes sense only in certain cases. For iMessage, it works. For WhatsApp, it works. But Google Messages still feels like a texting app with IM features peppered in for effect. I know it is more than that, but it still feels like an old-school texting app at the end of the day that I only use out of necessity.

Branding gone all wrong

Adding to some of the weirdness of it all is Google’s decision to try and brand RCS as a new thing. Sure, MMS/SMS became coloqually known as “texting” over time, but that wasn’t a branding decision. It just happened. With Google’s attempt to name the actual, underlying service, it only served to make things a bit more muddy.

After all, Google had an IM service in the past called GChat and they have a current product for Workspace called Chat. Naming the RCS service that powers Google Messages “Chat” was, well, pretty odd – even for Google. When the app would display that you were connected via RCS with another user, the Google Messages app would simply say that you were chatting with them. For most users, this meant absolutely nothing.

With the latest update, however, Google has given up on this nomenclature and simply elected to display “RCS Message” in the input field when both users are leveraging Google Messages to its full capabilities. While not a change in the actual functionality of the service, this at least makes things a bit clearer to the end user. Granted, most people don’t know what RCS even is, so I’m not sure how much this will help.

In the end, a lot more education needs to happen and – at least here in the US – Google desperately needs Apple to at least include RCS alongside SMS/MMS in iMessage if Google Messages is to really become a widely-adopted service. Until some of these shifts happen, it remains unclear to most people why they should even consider using Google Messages for anything more than a place for those old, necessary, arbitrary text messages to live.