5333 private links
For Google, not buying WhatsApp in 2013 feels like a major turning point. Google would go on to launch seven competing messaging and video apps over the years: Google Hangouts in 2013; Google Spaces, Google Allo, and Google Duo in 2016; and Google Chat and Google Meet in 2017. The company also pushed for RCS over Google Messages in 2019. Cue's prediction that the company could "lose" to a Google-led WhatsApp now seems like a dream from a bygone era.
Cue also called messaging "one of the most important apps in a mobile environment," which represents a striking difference from how Google approaches messaging. At Google, messaging is only ever handled by an endless series of underfunded, unstable side projects led by job-hopping project managers. Google releases a new messaging app about every 12-18 months, making it very difficult for any single app to gain traction and reducing consumer confidence in any individual product. The heads of these projects often leave the company shortly after a splashy product launch, and with no top-down direction on what the company should support, the products usually start winding down once the leader bails.
Federighi's comments echo Apple's longstanding position that iMessage is a key lock-in component of Apple's walled garden and that the company shouldn't make it easy for "iPhone families" to incorporate Android devices. The Epic case earlier revealed a 2016 comment from Apple's Phil Schiller, saying that "moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us."