Yes it is.

With massive decisions like this that fundamentally screw up the company's perception by clients, the CEO isn't the only one to look at, they're just the scapegoat.

Always need to see what happened with the rest of the Board of Directors. Are those the same people? The CEO works for the Board.

This has almost nothing to do with Google, it's a feature that has to be enabled by the app developer. Meaning they want to exclude users getting the APK for their app from elsewhere.

Eh, no one else is doing anything to provide support apart from Google either. Anyone else could do their own thing, no one is prevented from their own support. But very few companies and carriers even began to develop support for RCS, even after the Universal Profile. That is why Google developed their own support and built that support into the native app.

Verizon had their own RCS support via a proprietary carrier-specific app that never worked with anyone outside Verizon as far as I remember, and they dropped it in favor of Google's option as soon as that was available. Samsung had their own RCS support in their proprietary Messaging app, also dropped because Google provides the same support on all of their products and Samsung doesn't have to do anything or support it in any way. Google now provides an option for all Android devices specifically because almost no one was adding support on their own.

Anyone can, no one else will, because they have no reason to. The average user doesn't care whether it's Google, their carrier, or the manufacturer providing support for sending high quality photos to their friend's phone number as long as it works.

Samsung had support before Google and Jibe... but they have abandoned their own RCS support. Simply because Google's works on all of their devices and they don't need to do any development to support it going forwards. Why pay for development and support for a system you don't have to and get nothing from? No one is buying a Samsung phone for the Samsung Messages RCS capability.

This isn’t done out of altruism.

I never said or even got close to claiming that it was.

But there is a distinct difference between Google taking a fragmented RCS implementation across carriers and manufacturers on Android devices, and providing a single universally supported option for Android (the operating system that they control, but don't prevent others from modifying heavily)... and Apple actively trying to avoid RCS support entirely in favor of their own proprietary system that does not support any products they don't make and sell directly. Verizon had their own RCS app on Android, and Samsung added RCS support to their Messaging app on their devices, among others prior to the Universal Profile and Google adding support directly in Android Messages. That's not something anyone can do or offer for iPhones other than Apple

Google worked to add support for essentially all Android customers. Apple decided none of their customers should be able to use RCS, whether they want to or not, simply because they had their own thing that only their customers could use and won't let anyone else use. You can't possibly be trying to claim that Apple is in any way a good guy here. Comparing the two directly here, Apple is clearly worse with no good reasoning for it, it is entirely for selfish reasons.

And absolutely zero users care about the reasons. They only know that sending messages back and forth is dogshit.

The source of the lack of support across is Apple not wanting to even try because they want everyone to use their proprietary system on their devices instead. Google at least implemented a system to get RCS support to as many devices as they could, even when carriers didn't do anything to help. Apple instead had to be threatened by regulators before they even began to consider looking at it.

Well I've been able to RCS with basically everyone on an android phone since 2019 with almost no issues. That's 5 years now.

I don't really care how Apple wants to try and justify it. The answer is they don't want to add support for an alternative to their walled garden proprietary system that no one else can use. They want to force everyone onto an iPhone and iMessage if possible. The only reason they're even looking at RCS support now is because of regulators starting to look at their glaring lack of support for interoperability.

That wouldn't be an issue today if Apple had started supporting RCS, the replacement for the old SMS/MMS system years ago like every Android phone. Instead of trying to strangle it by acting like iMessage on iOS was the only solution.