Google Talk via SMS: Still Dead

Remember I've been fuming about how easy it to get Google Talk via SMS stuck with no way out?

Well, guess what, it's still stuck, five months later. All the recipients I've tried to communicate with failed to respond via SMS at some point, which rendered Talk to SMS channels dead, and there is nothing you can do about unblocking them. Zip. Nada. No block expiration. No "enable this contact to send SMS to my phone" setting.

A search on "must reply before you can send more messages" confirms that the issue is alive and well, with no resolution in sight.

Two trends are becoming more and more distinct:

• Good luck getting prompt customer service from Google if they don't feel like it;
• Applications that "almost work" (other prominent examples: late Latitude, less-than-dependable Android) are becoming the public face of Google.

Google Talk via SMS Hits The IQ Barrier

A while ago Google introduced SMS Text Messaging for chat support.

For a while, it was good and well, but, apparently, either people started racking up text messaging bills or just were afraid of doing so, and SMS support got trimmed - the message length couldn't be arbitrary or close to it (as it was in the beginning), and the number of messages sent to the other party before the reply was necessary to continue dropped - eventually to one, or so it appears.

And then the denial of service came into effect. Consider the following scenario:

1. You desperately need to reach someone;
2. They're not online, or outside of data coverage area, so you can't IM them;
3. You invoke the "switch to SMS" option and send them a message;
4. SMS is not quite as user friendly for non-smart phones, and there may be situations where it is not practical (for example, you can easily read SMS while driving, but to send SMS is much more difficult than to make a voice call), so they either log in and IM you, or simply call you and take care of business;
5. They conveniently forget (that is, assuming they ever knew) about the fact that they have to reply to you before you can send another message to them;
6. You get stuck with a non-functional end of IM/SMS gateway - the counter doesn't expire, and if you try to "switch to SMS" a week or month later, the dreaded "X must reply before you can send more messages" error is still there.

Boom, you're dead.

Oh, and as soon as they remove your message they were supposed to reply to in order to reactivate your end of the SMS chat, everything is lost forever.

The only option left is to switch to the plain old SMS provided by your phone hardware - but that's much less convenient than using SMS gateway provided by Google (keyboard assisted, storable, searchable, etc.).

My guess is that expiring the switch counter in a reasonable amount of time would be fair enough.

Wonder how and when Google is going to address this.

Conspiracy Theory: There Will Be No Google Talk for Android

Not that it's non-obvious, just didn't stop to think about it until now...

Fact #1: mobile carriers charge customers for airtime.
Fact #2: Google Talk uses data channel to transfer voice.

Corollary: Google Talk jeopardizes carrier's business model, and puts a strain on their data channel capacity. This can't make carriers happy.

Corollary 2: There will be no Google Talk for Android.

So if you're developing your own VOIP application, now is a time to rejoice and have a second breath - the first to get to the market share hits the jackpot.

UPDATE: See the UMA conspiracy theory.