We haven’t forgotten yet Beeper — the same multimessenger that iMessage launched on Android, which upset Apple, so it acquired Automattic, which owns WordPress, Tumblr, Simplenote, and other services.
The deal is part of Automattic’s strategy to make online messengers a key part of its business. The amount of the deal is not officially disclosed, but Bloomberg, citing a source with knowledge of the matter, writes that Automattic will pay $125 million for Beeper. Under the terms of the deal, Automattic will fully absorb the Beeper developer — a team of 27 employees will join the new owner. Among them is Eric Migicovsky, co-founder of Beeper and Pebble. He will lead Automattic’s messenger business. Eric Migicovsky’s official blog post said, that the «app will retain independence in the Other Bets» division. Although the deal was concluded after a public spat with Apple, Automattic has long been an investor in Beeper.
As for Beeper, it is an application that combines different messaging services in one interface. Yes, a universal messenger to manage all other messengers. The first beta version of Beeper was released in 2021. The service runs on the Matrix distributed database protocol. In April, it came out from the beta, in which 115 thousand users participated (another 466 thousand were in the queue.
There is no longer a waitlist, Beeper is completely free and available to everyone on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. It currently supports 14 messengers and social networks, including Telegram, Signal, Instagram, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord. A premium subscription with additional features will be available later.
iMessage on Android in the context of the confrontation between Google and Apple over RCS
There are a few more important points to mention. First, prior to Beeper, Automattic acquired another messenger aggregator — Texts in October 2023. It also works on the Matrix protocol. In the future, the Texts and Beeper teams will unite under the Beeper brand, and for now, everything remains the same for users of both services.
Secondly, the quarrel with Apple over Beeper Miniwhich allowed Android users to send iMessages to iPhone users. As a reminder, at the end of March The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Apple due to «monopoly on the smartphone market», mentioning the Beeper incident, among others. So it’s likely that Apple will eventually get its way and official support for iMessage will appear on Android.
For now, Apple is in no hurry to bring iMessage to Android, but later this year (in the fall) it will implement the RCS exchange protocol 
In 2008, the GSMA developed a new standard data exchange protocol that will eventually replace SMS/MMS. RCS allows subscribers to communicate through a universal messaging service with the same features as messengers, which has been actively promoted by Google over the past 5 years. This will make it as easy as possible to exchange messages and files between iPhone and Android.