Technology

The one thing that feels off to me about Google’s implementation is that it’s not vendor agnostic and all comms would need to go through Google’s servers to work. The E2EE bit is an entirely Google specific extension to RCS, for example. The last thing we need is another chromium situation in a different area.

If it wasn’t a Google specific extension, phone networks around the world would need to pick up the pace and adopt RCS, but also they’d need to keep up to date with the latest version of the standard to ensure the functionality is supported. Now, looking at phone networks’ previous track record, they’re really not going to implement it unless they’re forced to and they’ll do so at a real snails pace.

At this point I’d agree that Apple not adopting RCS is really not helpful here.

I feel the EU’s Digital Market Act that’s forcing messenger applications to be interoperable with each other is going to be a much more viable option towards that perfect world scenario. The IETF is even fleshing out a common protocol for it, MIMI with MLS.

But Signal has been available on Android and iOS this whole time.

Aside from the fact that Google finally implementing E2EE in RCS not having anything at all to do with Apple, I’m confused.

Apple developed a fully encrypted messaging system 16 years ago, 4 years later RCS was developed but wasn’t even adopted by all three major US carriers until 2 years ago (much more complicated than just this as they refused to work together on Universal Profile standards and Google has so ‘valiantly’ stepped in to do it without them), and Apple is the bad guy for not switching to a competitors standard that was (until now) less secure, uses googles back end services, is arguably less capable, has an extremely poor desktop access experience, is less intuitive to enable, and takes away a competitive advantage? All while other E2EE messaging apps have been available on both iOS and Android for years.

Why not push for google to adopt iMessage as a standard instead? Maybe google has been holding iMessage back for 16 years. Maybe Apple isn’t holding rcs back but carriers are. Or maybe it’s the GSMA. Or maybe it’s a larger systemic issue with capitalism. Or maybe it’s one of any number of other issues that makes it disadvantageous for Apple and Google to work together on this.

This article, cancerous as the site is on mobile, does a good job breaking down the issue and how it’s not as clear cut as folks here are trying to make it: https://www.androidpolice.com/google-rcs-messaging-feud-apple-imessage/

At the end of the day, y’all being angry at Apple about RCS sounds just a bit like simping for google and falling prey to their marketing campaign to try and win the messaging war. Im not really interested in experiencing another chromium situation but with messaging. Particularly when WhatsApp is king in the messaging space globally.