Problems with Google SMS Channels!

In my last post about Google SMS channels, I discussed its usefulness and also brought into light some of its pros and  cons. If you have already read the post, you can surely recall that, even after working hard we were unable to locate any disadvantages in this group messaging service. As a result more and more people started creating their own channels hastily.

Later on, it was discovered that many flaws and bugs were present in Google’s SMS service as well. In the Google help group, Sriganesh expressed how this service may be exploited and misused. He explained that, as Google SMS Channels are now opened only for Indian users, anyone can use the RSS feeds of foreign nation’s blogs like TechCrunch, lifehacker, etc and publish their contents via SMS, ultimately affecting the credibility of such web-sites. In response to this Google said someone can report the channels that are using others contents and stringent action would be taken.

Finally I was disappointed because this is not the only drawback, there are many others as well, some of them are listed below:

• There is a cap to the number of channels that can be created, subscribed to and the number of customized SMS that can be sent per day.
• Messages sent by channel owner will not be sent to his/her own mobile.
• On the first day of its launch, the messages tend to get delivered within seconds but this is not the case now.
• And the biggest drawback that Manoj Fracis suggested was, there is no option for channel owner to view the details of people subscribed to their channel. 🙁

So all these disadvantages are the basis of my disappointment, specially because the service is provided by Google. Can you ever imagine that the Internet giant like Google could come up with a service with so many flaws?

Thanks Deepesh for the tip… 🙂