ericthehalfbee

Skeptical said:

Are people so vapid that a green or blue bubble is a life altering event in their existence? God, having first world problems must be great. 

gatorguy said:

spheric said:

gatorguy said:

ericthehalfbee said:

Apple basically said “fuck you” to Google.

I’ve repeatedly said Apple should counter Google’s shame campaign by announcing they’ll support RCS when Google opens up their RCS APIs for everyone. Including competitors like WhatsApp or Telegram.

Google has their own RCS APIs in Android but Samsung is the only one allowed to use them. Developers have asked and Google has done nothing to allow other Apps to implement RCS via their system and use E2EE.

So Apple did one better and said they’ll work with standards bodies to improve RCS.

Now Google’s hopes of a messaging duopoly are finished.

Apple has no incentive to see E2EE come to RCS. For the sake of marketing, they need to be able to claim iMessage is more secure than any others. Once all of them are interoperably encrypted Apple loses a talking point. 

Nor does Google — if they did, they'd let other app vendors use their RCS API. 

Since they don't, we can assume that interoperability is not a priority — it's getting people to use Google's own messaging app. 

Ah, you assume because someone here said they don't that they were right? That person wasn't. Always check for yourself before believing everything someone here says.  
https://developers.google.com/business-communications/rcs-business-messaging/reference/rest

Then there are these current Google RCS users:

• 1-800 Contacts
• 1-800 Flowers.com
• Booking.com
• SnapTravel
• Subway
• Smooch
• Twilio
• ATT
• T-Mo
• Verizon
• Orange

Suppose you want to talk about the encryption specifically being unavailable to developers. In that case, it's only been available in Google Messages for less than a year, and group chat E2EE for barely more than 90 days. Did you expect fleshed-out API's for developers already? Reading Reddit developer threads, the high potential for misuse/abuse from some of them has been pointed out, and working on a way of vetting apps individually was mentioned as a reasonable expectation.

In the meantime, Google is still prodding GSMA to make encryption an essential part of the standard, an effort that pre-dates whatever assistance Apple might offer next year, and which would make Google's Signal-based E2EE no longer needed (unless it becomes the standard or part of it). It was the foot-dragging by GSMA that led to Google taking responsibility for doing it for them to begin with. To me, that shows E2EE is not a priority for the carrier-controlled GSMA and RCS wasn't going to have it (nor did carriers want it) without a powerful an capable Apple or Google. Apple had no incentive to get involved, so it was left to Google to figure out. 

They've also been an early advocate of MLS, which does make E2E encryption essential in the evolving standard.
https://www.ietf.org/blog/mls-secure-and-usable-end-to-end-encryption/

 As evidence of their intent to encrypt interoperable chat sessions, Google already added support for MLS, which BTW is what I expect will be the requirement for messaging apps to talk with each other in a secure and private manner. I don't think RCS is it, though it will obviously be a large part of the chat landscape, and a huge step up from SMS/MMS.

gatorguy said:

ericthehalfbee said:

gatorguy said:

ericthehalfbee said:

Apple basically said “fuck you” to Google.

I’ve repeatedly said Apple should counter Google’s shame campaign by announcing they’ll support RCS when Google opens up their RCS APIs for everyone. Including competitors like WhatsApp or Telegram.

Google has their own RCS APIs in Android but Samsung is the only one allowed to use them. Developers have asked and Google has done nothing to allow other Apps to implement RCS via their system and use E2EE.

So Apple did one better and said they’ll work with standards bodies to improve RCS.

Now Google’s hopes of a messaging duopoly are finished.

Apple has no incentive to see E2EE come to RCS. For the sake of marketing, they need to be able to claim iMessage is more secure than any others. Once all of them are interoperably encrypted Apple loses a talking point. 

So don't stake your hopes on Apple coming to our rescue riding a white horse. IMO they are doing this hoping that minimal effort will appease EU regulators, while avoiding risk to the marketing value of iMessage. Going in with half a heart won't push GSMA to do anything. We wouldn't have gotten this far without Google, in effect, telling carriers get screwed and get out of the way 5 years ago, secure and private messaging is coming despite you.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-android-texting-carriers-imessage-encryption

Google is not always on the right side of things, but in the past few years they done better. This is one of those Google-is-on-the-right-side things. 

Apple doesn’t care if RCS gets E2EE as it won’t threaten iMessage. RCS will just be a different colored bubble in iMessage that lets users know their chat is RCS and encrypted. All the other benefits of iMessage don’t disappear or become diminished because of RCS.

Google is on the right side? So restricting developer access to RCS while giving a special deal to Samsung is considered “right”?

The ONLY reason Google is now cooperating is they would also have to abide by EU laws. This doesn’t just affect Apple.

Too bad for Google now that the EU buried their last chance at having a dominant messaging platform after 16 years of failures. Had Apple adopted RCS 2 years ago Google Messages would have taken off and displaced countless WhatsApp (or other) users since the only two platforms that could text each other would be iMessage and Google Messages. This is what Google wanted - to have Apple help them become a duopoly. No longer possible.

Google Messages will be another has-been messaging platform since everyone will be able to talk to everyone else over RCS. WhatsApp users can keep using WhatsApp. iMessage users will keep using iMessage. The most used messengers will retain their current positions in the market, except now they’ll interoperate.

It was never going to be a duopoly. Outside of the US other messaging apps are the market leaders. But your claim that Google RCS is restricted to Google and Samsung is wrong. You're either not looking (Hint: Jibe) or meant to say the E2EE Google RCS version.

Seeing as E2EE Google Messages has been out for less than a year, and default group E2EE just three months, the growth has been pretty impressive IMO. I can only assume the E2EE RCS infrastructure is still being built-out, and you should too. It requires a lot of Google resources already.

You know how things work in Appleland; a big new feature rolls out to one or two regions before gradually getting a wider distribution. A lot of pieces need to be firmly in place before they start running. ApplePay, AppleCard and satellite are some that immediately come to mind. You don't hold that against Apple, but you hold Google to a higher standard?

Maybe give Google more than a few months to settle in. As a developer yourself you should already have understood that.