Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. I've been praying for a Google Voice replacement for around a decade now, I guess this it it!
What's wrong with Google voice? Afaik it's not being deprecated.
I'm dying to jump ship whether or not it's deprecated though, because the web and Android apps are just unbearably shitty.
The web app simply fails to keep up with my typing speed (I can't even imagine how they accomplish this), and the unread counts are usually incorrect.
The Android app doesn't even handle the compose SMS intent, so you can't use it as the default for outgoing messages... this was briefly fixed when they folded Voice into Hangouts, but then broken again 6 months later or so when they decided to roll that back.