Google is practically begging Apple to adopt RCS, but still isn't all-in itself
In the middle of a push by Google to make Apple adopt the RCS messaging standard, a Google executive admits it's been a messy and incomplete process.
RCS messaging
In recent months, the company has urged Apple to adopt the Rich Communication Services standard. In August, Android created a website highlighting some of the interoperability between Android and iOS.
Some issues include broken group chats, lack of end-to-end encryption and typing indicators, low-quality media, and more. Android believes Apple can solve these problems by adopting RCS.
Still, even Google admits it's half-baked. In a press briefing on October 18, Jan Jedrzejowicz, head of product for Messages by Google, said Google still hasn't finalized the RCS specification.
"There is still quite a lot of shifting and changing in the underlying protocol," he said, talking about pending features such as end-to-end encryption for group chats. "It's just a question of maturity."
Unlike iMessage, end-to-end encryption is not built-in to RCS. However, carriers and companies can add such encryption if they choose. Google added support for this encryption in 2020 but only for one-on-one conversations.
Google also needs to bring RCS to Google Voice. "We recognize that every messaging app that supports SMS, including Google Voice, should update to RCS, but we don't have any news today," Jedrzejowicz added.
For now, RCS is merely an alternative and not yet a standard. Despite adoption by some carriers and companies, even Google admits it needs to make more changes and improvements.
The company also needs to settle on one messaging app for consumers that it will support indefinitely. Google is notorious for killing off services, and pass messengers it has created and killed include Allo, Hangouts on Air, YouTube Messages, Google Spaces, Google Talk, Meebo, and soon - Google Hangouts.
Read on AppleInsider
RCS messaging
In recent months, the company has urged Apple to adopt the Rich Communication Services standard. In August, Android created a website highlighting some of the interoperability between Android and iOS.
Some issues include broken group chats, lack of end-to-end encryption and typing indicators, low-quality media, and more. Android believes Apple can solve these problems by adopting RCS.
Still, even Google admits it's half-baked. In a press briefing on October 18, Jan Jedrzejowicz, head of product for Messages by Google, said Google still hasn't finalized the RCS specification.
"There is still quite a lot of shifting and changing in the underlying protocol," he said, talking about pending features such as end-to-end encryption for group chats. "It's just a question of maturity."
Unlike iMessage, end-to-end encryption is not built-in to RCS. However, carriers and companies can add such encryption if they choose. Google added support for this encryption in 2020 but only for one-on-one conversations.
Google also needs to bring RCS to Google Voice. "We recognize that every messaging app that supports SMS, including Google Voice, should update to RCS, but we don't have any news today," Jedrzejowicz added.
For now, RCS is merely an alternative and not yet a standard. Despite adoption by some carriers and companies, even Google admits it needs to make more changes and improvements.
The company also needs to settle on one messaging app for consumers that it will support indefinitely. Google is notorious for killing off services, and pass messengers it has created and killed include Allo, Hangouts on Air, YouTube Messages, Google Spaces, Google Talk, Meebo, and soon - Google Hangouts.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
In the last twenty-four Apple has had to built/create just everything to support their ecosystems to survive physical Apple stores, Apple Pay, Apple Watch, iPod, IPhone, iPad, SOC’s, continuous development of a OS desktop and mobile, Apple Maps etc etc…If Apple doesn’t do it to support their ecosystem who will? third parties are inadequate system wide.
don’t have a problem of group chats….i must be missing something here??
And since you start with the so called "green bubble issue", I think we know where you are coming from. But, not only does RCS have nothing to do with eliminating "green bubbles", it would actually necessitate a third, perhaps pink, bubble color. The bubble color indicates the messaging protocol. Currently that's green for SMS and blue for iMessage. If Apple were to add a third protocol to iMessage, they would also need to add a third color to indicate that protocol.
So, rather than eliminating "green bubbles", RCS would proliferate bubble colors by making even more colors necessary.
(Really, this green bubble argument is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.)
That pretty much says it all. The days of perceiving Alphabet-Google as a technology moonshot company are over. They have been transformed into a fickle data-harvesting, advertising-delivery service.
Until they get their own act together, Apple should just wait.
Apple has a slow, don’t-release it until it is ready, approach. BloggerBlog & Danox’s points are spot-on.
https://mashable.com/article/messages-android-end-to-end-encryption
https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en#:~:text=End-to-end encryption is,and the phone you message.
Yes, but Google's version is not a standard version of RCS, it is an extension of RCS. Which is what they're pushing Apple to adopt.
Google is the new Microsoft when it comes to standards; "Embrace, Extend, Exterminate"