Google acquires companies from time to time, but we don’t generally hear much about why, which is why Google announcing the acquisition of a company on the Android blog is a bit different. Google has announced the Jibe Mobile team is joining Google, with the CEO of Jibe Mobile confirming on their site that Google has acquired the company.
So, why has Google gone after Jibe Mobile? Well, it’s all about Android Rich Communications Services (RCS) a messaging system which could supplant the more popular SMS standard. The SMS standard is accepted everywhere, but it’s limited, and RCS could make messaging better, or as Google says
Rich Communications Services (RCS) is a new standard for carrier messaging and brings many of the features that people now expect from mobile messaging, such as group chats, high res photos and more.
Where does Jibe Mobile fit in? Well, according to Google, Jibe is a leading provider of RCS services and they will be helping Google’s carrier partners to easily deploy RCS to their users.
Better messaging standards sounds good to me, so hopefully we see more of this.
