this is not about reaching your fellow geek with 5+ gmail accounts, its about reaching your parents, grandparents and other relatives that may be rocking a cheap featurephone on plan and whos eyes glaze over when one start to talk xmpp, smtp, imap, pop3 and all the rest.

all they know is that a text ( not even sms in most english speaking parts of the world) or photo can be sendt to their contacts phone number with little effort on their part...

even apple, whos marketing seems able to convince people to adopt just about any idea of theirs, had to give up and implement mms...