Google announces more carrier support for its implementation of RCS, rebrands Messenger to Android Messages, makes app default on phones from LG, ZTE, others
When text messaging was simple, SMS worked beautifully. You could send 160 characters to anyone with a cellphone, and they'd receive it the same way they would a phone call.
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2017, texting on Android was still fragmented around SMS, and Google's answer was to push its own RCS implementation through carriers while standardizing the client: Messenger became Android Messages, and LG, ZTE and other manufacturers agreed to ship it as the default app. The move put Google, not the handset maker or the carrier, in control of the messaging surface on Android.
That bet paid out over the following years: Google launched Chat, an RCS-based service meant to supplant SMS, opened RCS business messaging to Sprint users with 40+ carriers and OEMs on board, and eventually rolled RCS out to all US Android Messages users. By 2023 the arc completed with group end-to-end encryption and RCS enabled by default — the endpoint of the default-app-and-carrier groundwork laid here.
First-order effects
- LG, ZTE and other OEM phones now ship with Android Messages preinstalled as the default, giving Google distribution for its RCS client that no download campaign could buy.
- Carriers signing onto Google's implementation adopt Google's protocol stack instead of building proprietary messaging clients, concentrating the Android messaging experience in one company's hands.
Second-order effects
- With a standardized client and carrier backing in place, Google gains the substrate for richer services — the same foundation it used a year later to launch Chat and open RCS business messaging to brands reaching Sprint subscribers.
- Carriers trade short-term relevance for offloading client maintenance to Google, shifting pricing and feature power over messaging away from the operators who owned SMS.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, carrier messaging converges on a single Google-operated stack — the trajectory that ends with RCS on by default and encrypted group chats in Messages, displacing SMS as Android's baseline.
- OEMs ceding the default messaging slot to Google sets a precedent where the conversation layer on Android becomes a platform for transactions and business messaging rather than a carrier utility.
The trend: Carrier text messaging is being absorbed into a Google-controlled RCS stack, with default-app placement on OEM handsets doing the consolidation work one carrier agreement at a time.