"It's encouraging to see Google, who has been the biggest critic of Apple's positioning of iMessage, welcome the tech giant with open arms, much like a parent waiting on the other end of the room for their baby to take their first steps. It's clear that the company sees the news as an opportunity to collaborate for all."
I am not a fan of Apple, the most profitable and highest markup company in consumer electronics. They make their big bucks for maintaining a monolithic structure, planned AND ENFORCED obsolescence, and other practices that are contrary to consumer interests, while offering the carrots of slightly more robust security and slightly more transparent UIs.
Repairability, universal ports, and other inter-operability features are being forced upon them by the EU, but RCS is being demanded by market forces - it is simply better to have a common enhanced messaging protocol.