Open messaging

Google has had an history of creating a lot of messaging products, one after the other. While the real reasons might not be clear, it is well known that Google rewards creating new products and not fixing existing ones which each messaging product required, which to me look like poor management.

Last month The Verge reported that Google turns to regulators to make Apple open up iMessage:

iMessage serves as “an important gateway between business users and their customers” and should be regulated as a “core” service under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), said Google and a group of major European telcos in a letter sent to the European Commission, and seen by The Financial Times. Being designated as a “core platform service” would be significant for iMessage, as it could compel Apple to make it interoperable with other messaging services.

I guess Google has gotten tired of the “green bubble” and given they never managed to take over the messaging segment, dominance that Facebook has with WhatsApp, they feel like they want the government to regulate this. The ironymeter show high level here.

Note that I am not against interoperability and open protocols, quite the opposite.

In all of this, Google has been pushing RCS, which is the successor of SMS as the telco backed messaging protocol. RCS has all the same characteristics of SMS, like telcos can decide to bill you for it, it’s not encrypted, require a phone number (not unlike WhatsApp or Signal, but I digress). So nothing better that other messaging products except controlled by an industry known to hate their customers since they are a regulated cartel.

Concerning RCS, techradar report that Hell freezes over – Apple to support RCS messages from Android phones next year:

“Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe the RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users,” said an Apple spokesperson.

Nothing surprising. This looks like a bone being throw at telcos to avoid having a regulator come hard on Apple. It doesn’t remove iMessage, nor obsoletes it. But I doubt it will be the end of the “green bubble” as techradar spells it out. It remain to be seen if the Message app on iOS integrates it deeper by bridging the two or if it just make it separated like SMS as soon as one user doesn’t have an iPhone.

Note that these messaging applications are a social bubble. It’s always a case of using to stay in touch with people, and interoperability would hinder that growth. That’s why we can’t have nice things.