Defaults matter. I too have WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat and a few others on my phone, but the fragmentation is annoying to deal with, and getting social groups (or even individuals) to move to a single consolidating messaging platform turns out to be much more difficult than I expected.
If the default chat app is featureful and universally supported, people tend not to stray toward non-default alternatives unless they offer meaningful benefits. Sure, this ship has in many ways already sailed, since those alternative apps have a lot of mindshare and network effects.
But if Apple added RCS to its default messaging app (or if Google were permitted to add iMessage support to its default messaging app), I would ditch everything else and just message everyone (including groups) using the default Android Messages app, relying on it to select the best non-SMS/non-MMS contact method for everyone, regardless of platform.
Sure, it would take a little more work to move messaging groups over, but the cool thing is that I could just do it myself, and not wait for my friends to download yet another messaging app. This is the problem I ran into when I wanted to get friends off of WhatsApp; I had to convince people to install something else, and not everyone felt like doing it. But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.
> While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
Just wanted to call this out as FUD. RCS existed as a standard long before Google was involved (nearly a decade?). I too don't love that it's tied to a phone number, but options for doing this well are limited, and building a second, parallel identity system has its own issues. RCS at least can be federated, and it'd be possible to allow phone users to choose their own provider. And in practice, phone number portability means you aren't stuck with the crappy choice of ditching your "identity", or sticking with a phone provider you hate.
Not sure how iMessage or WhatsApp or Google Chat or Signal is any better, though, as they're all controlled by a single company that requires you to use their identity system.