Chat: Google’s big shot at killing Apple’s iMessage

Tech giant behind Android corrals phone operators around the world to launch a unified SMS replacement

Google has unveiled a new messaging system, Chat, an attempt to replace SMS, unify Android's various messaging services and beat Apple's iMessage and Facebook's WhatsApp with the help of mobile phone operators.

Unlike traditional texting, or SMS, most modern messaging services - such as Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Apple's iMessage - are so-called over-the-top (OTT) services, which circumvent the mobile phone operator by sending messages over the internet.