Google will transition Android Messages web app from Android.com to Google.com

This piece of news, perhaps trivial, indicates something deeper going on with Google and its Android brand. A new commit spotted in Chromium’s Gerrit source code management reveals that Google intends to transition its web portal for sending and receiving SMS and MMS messages.

If you use the Android Messages app (which was eventually renamed to just “Messages”), you can access a web interface to chat with people from your phone using your desktop. To do this, all you have to do is head to Messages.Android.com. However, the new commit suggests that Google will be transitioning users to a new address: Messages.Google.com

In simple terms, what this commit does is tell Chromebooks to stop using the Android.com URL and use the Google.com URL in versions 72 or 73 of Chrome OS which include the “Better Together” features for integrating Android and Chrome OS.

This change deepens the idea that Google will eventually phase out the use of “Android” branding. Ever since it launched, there have always been people who didn’t know that Android is pretty much synonymous with Google. The proof is in the pudding: Android Pay was renamed to Google Pay, Android Messages to just Messages and Android Wear to just Wear OS. So what is stopping Google from just removing the "Android" altogether?

We could speculate that Google plans to totally rebrand android as something along the lines of “Google OS” for its 10.0 version of Android “Q”. Perhaps the earliest we could hear about this is at Google I/O where a future version of Android is usually announced.

In its current state, the Messages.Google.com URL doesn’t lead anywhere, but this might change in the coming weeks.

Source

Reader comments

Bro, in America, most use iMessage. When I was on Android, iPhone users wouldn't include me into groups for group work which pissed me off. I'm not saying all Americans are like this, but most of the people at my school are like that: Apple elitist

  • Anonymous

what they need to do is get rid of that QR log in and use email and password. When ny phone dies and I need to access my messages on a desktop, how am I going to do that?

Haha. Worst explanation EVER. "I need an iPhone because I live in US". Come back when you have been flashing phones for over 10 years.