As we’ve been tracking, Google is now beginning to roll out “Profile discovery” in Messages for Android to establish your name and photo across the RCS app and others.

This is part of “Profile discovery,” which appears in Messages Settings > Advanced once rolled out to your phone. It is a Google Account-level setting that you can turn on/off. Google notes what phone number is associated with your name and profile image, with the ability to change things.

Ok, so good things:

• I’m glad it’s not auto-pulling from your Google profile, because you may not want that data actually visible to everyone who has your phone number.
• I guess it makes it more like iMessage which is cool (?)

Thoughts:

• So our text messages (which, I know RCS technically isn’t but for all intents and purposes it is a replacement and serves the same purpose) are becoming more chat-like.
• At the same time, Google has made Google Chat more like Messages, visually.
• If the intent is to eventually combine the two, the advantage is that Google has a stronger and more unified messaging platform, but the downside is Google’s RCS implementation is even more customized to the point it’s harder for others to hop on.
• If the intent is not to combine the two, I don’t see why making them look almost identical and yet having two separate apps is at all a good thing for Google. Their user base remains fragmented.

Hopefully this is some secret ongoing messaging solution cleanup plan by Google. I won’t hold my breath, but a small part of me still longs for the return of a Hangouts-esque combined system.