Ron Amedeo over at Ars Technica put together an excellent overview of Google’s RCS, and why it’s not the same as standard RCS. Here’s what Ron had to say:

Google tried to glom features onto the aging RCS spec, but if you consider those part of the RCS sales pitch, which Google does, now it’s more like you selling “Google’s proprietary fork of RCS.” Google would really like it if Apple built its proprietary RCS fork into iMessage.

So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn’t just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it’s also about running Apple’s messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.

Google pitches RCS as “open like Linux”, but it’s really more “open like Android”. There is an open source component for sure, but make no mistake, the RCS being sold is the one Google controls. Never mind that Apple and Google are bitter rivals, why in the world would a company staking its brand on privacy further a relationship with one helplessly addicted to user data?