Oh and encryption. That's not default like it should be, it's a "Mode within" that you have to select. Which people won't because of the hassle and mass surveillance continues.
If they made the bloody thing properly encrypted end to end all the time I could forgive them for their blatant bait and switch, for keeping everyone's email searchable by the nsa in gmail (whether you use it or not, your mail is there) and all the rest. But no, surveillance is what google do and they're addicted to it.
Do no evil, yeah they announced they dropped that, didn't they?
> Which people won't because of the hassle and mass surveillance continues.
That's why they added it. Now they can market it as "we have encryption too", but it's so out of the primary experience that not many will bother with it. E2E has become a checkmark to list, because most don't care about the most important part - how it works.
It's similar with Facebooks secret messages, where the secret messages are apart from regular ones.
Lets face it: the only thing this was built is Google collecting data to feed the "Google assistant".
Upshot now if you use xmpp like you always did it's received as sms which is probably not what you wanted. Thanks google.
So get into bed with them by all means, but don't be suprised once you're tied up they flip you over.