For those of us here in the 'states, (or the UK, France, and Mexico), this doesn't really matter. Google officially rolled out RCS/chat support via Messages, so we're all first-class citizens in the future of digital messaging. But this change will leave those that used the hack in unsupported markets out of luck.

Aww...

Even though it sounded like there might be some caveats, the big four US carriers recently announced that they'd finally get their act together and roll out a joint RCS system, bringing modern messaging to US customers sometime next year. Too little, too late, carriers. Earlier today, some folks figured out how to forcibly enable RCS on seemingly any recent phone here in the US via Google's Messages app. At first, it sounded too good to be true, but in our own testing, it works.