Google is pushing harder than ever to make RCS the norm. | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Google announced a number of updates to its Messages app on Thursday, including an in-line reply feature for responding to individual messages and the ability to star or set a reminder on a text. Some of the best new features require users to have RCS enabled, which seems to be precisely the point: Google is pushing harder and harder to get carriers and developers to make RCS the standard, even if it means some complicated compatibility issues in the meantime.
RCS is a long-in-the-works standard aimed at replacing SMS as the primary infrastructure for mobile messaging. Since it works over the internet and not carrier bandwidth, it can support a huge number of additional features: encryption, multimedia, more interactive features, and…