Why we can send emails from gmail to yahoo or outlook but cannot do the same with instant messaging apps like WhatsApp to Messenger or iMessage?
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Compatible and agreed upon protocols.
The protocol for email goes back to the very first days of the internet (so like early 70s) and networking. The email protocols (SMTP for server-server communication) originally, then POP and later IMAP – these are more for server-client interactions) are all long since standardized and well documented as open standards.
So long as your email server, or client applications adhere to the standards they’re all interchangeable. If you write your own email server software, so long as it follows the SMTP protocol, msgs can be sent to or received from any other email server.
Each of the instant messaging services have their own, proprietary protocols, which offer unique feature sets and are designed around different purposes. WhatsApp for example was built on top of the SMS text msg platform, thus is designed with the small, simple message in mind. Messenger was web based from the start and meant to augment the rich multimedia environment of Facebook. But whereas email was intended to be an OPEN standard from the start, each of these proprietary services are likely to remain so – why? because revenue lock-in. If you control the entire service platform you can mandate that either accounts have to pay to not see ads, or you get to push ads to everyone.
You could, I suppose establish means of interconnecting all these services. But while you might own the iMessage address for @ATLAN007, someone else owns ~ATLAN007 on FB messenger. So that’s an issue. Also, even if you had the account @ATLAN0007 everywhere, and I could send a message to @ATLAN0007 on some central location, now where does it end up? Everywhere? WhatsApp, Messanger and iMessage are all geared around the concept of chat groups or channels. If I send a blanket message to you on one service, and they were all somehow interconnected, where should it show up? The first WhatsApp or Messanger channel/group that we both have in common? All of them?
An email address is very specific. [email protected] is a distinct separate destination from [email protected]. You can forward from one to the other but that’s an artificial construct.
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