Sorry Google, but Messages still has a long way to go to become the Android texting king

Source Domain: www.phonearena.com

We use our smartphones for almost everything today, but at the end of the day, they are still communication devices. Text messaging is the way we keep our social lives organized and our families connected on a daily basis.Google spent the last few years on a massive campaign to make their native messaging app, Google Messages, the indisputable champion for Android users everywhere. With that, the company has been steadily rolling out a string of updates to their app to try to make texting more modern and feature-rich. This has all been in hopes that you will use their app exclusively and not bother to install a third-party messaging app. But at times, giving an app a brand new coat of paint, as it were, is not necessarily going to change user behavior.

Adding a familiar trick to the chat window

According to a new report, Google is bringing real-time location sharing directly into the Google Messages app. This means that you will not have to open up Google Maps, copy a URL, and then paste it into a text to a friend to share your location. This will all be done directly within the active text conversation.This new feature is being made possible through an addition to the Rich Communication Services standard, or RCS, which is the underlying technology that Google has been pushing to replace standard SMS text messaging altogether. RCS is what powers features like typing indicators, read receipts, and high-quality photo sharing, but it is also going to enable location tracking between Android devices.
It is for sure a great and welcome feature. However, I must say that, while I am pleased to see it feature added to Google Messages, I think that Google Messages still has a long way to go to catch up to other messasing apps — in particular, the big boy of messaging: WhatsApp.