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More secure in a sense, but why should anyone need to give the keys to their instant messaging castle to Google?

I'm shocked that a startup with a similar approach to WhatsApp hasn't made a reasonable rigorous application yet.

There are already several messaging applications that are much better than WhatsApp (Line or WeChat, to name a few without including the Big G), but people keep sticking to WhatsApp due to the network effect (it's what your friends have).

It's rather sad, given that with practically any other application (Line, WeChat, GTalk, Skype) you can talk via phone, tablet or PC, and with WhatsApp I have to message my friends with a tiny phone screen while my wonderful desktop keyboard and dual monitors sit there laughing at me.

> why should anyone need to give the keys to their instant messaging castle to Google?

Equivalent to cc'ing the NSA.

Let's be honest, I'd rather have NSA snoop on what on my texts than a criminal. Both are bad but NSA is at least slightly better.

The trick is to let nobody snoop on your texts.

Which is, as we can see in the GP, is hard ;).

Whatsapp - broken encryption Google Hangout - NSA Texts - NSA (and others) Facebook Messenger - NSA iMessage - probably NSA, though I don't know.

and so forth. Most commonly used text services are woefully leaky.

Yes, that was exactly my point :)

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