auxio

anonymouse said:

auxio said:

Anilu_777 said:

I still wonder why Google even cares about this and then why it’s pushing so hard. I don’t trust Google. 

Marketing? So that they look like the hero fighting against big bad Apple and winning. GG also mentioned in the other thread that carriers might be turning to them for the server requirements of E2EE, so that'd be worth a fair bit.

The "server requirements of E2EE" are basically to route messages. If the devices sending and receiving aren't handling all the encryption/decryption themselves, it's not E2EE.

So I guess all devices are online and available to receive a message at all times? No? Then you need a server to store those encrypted messages, images, videos, etc until the device is available. Maybe even know how to route them to multiple recipients and on different carriers. Oh, and look, Google has a solution for you.

Anilu_777 said:

I still wonder why Google even cares about this and then why it’s pushing so hard. I don’t trust Google. 

Marketing? So that they look like the hero fighting against big bad Apple and winning. GG also mentioned in the other thread that carriers might be turning to them for the server requirements of E2EE, so that'd be worth a fair bit.

gatorguy said:

anonymouse said:

headfull0wine said:

I think they’ll still have blue and green bubbles. It’s just that the green bubble fallback option will be RCS and have more functionality than SMS. They won’t have the same level of encryption or the “surprise and delight” features like Memoji. Hence the need to still distinguish RCS from iMessage. 

CelticPaddy said:

It wasn’t done for marketing purposes. It was done to distinguish the difference between iMessage and SMS/MMS. The bubbles were all green originally. 

Exactly, because the iPhone user needs to know what messaging protocol is being used for a conversation so they can decide what's appropriate to say in that conversation (e.g., you probably don't want to share a password when seeing green bubbles).

I think they will go with a third color in the red family, with pink being the most likely. If the RCS standard gets E2EE, there might be a 4th color (purple?) that denotes that. Why 2 different colors for RCS? Because older implementations that don't support E2EE will still be around for quite a while and you need to be able to distinguish them from those that do.

You understand that Apple's implementation will be the unencrypted one, left in the hands of carriers to manage? That will mean you as an iPhone user are not the only one who should know what protocol is being used. When you're in a conversation with Google RCS users, their messages may not be as private as they otherwise would be would be due to your RCS exposing them to carrier snooping.

But at the moment the only way to E2E encrypt your RCS messages will be for Apple to secure them on Apple servers or use Google to do so. It doesn't appear Apple wants to go to that trouble and expense and will wait out carriers to take responsibility for it whenever GSM finalizes. 

It'll work both ways. Sure, iPhone users who use RCS to message Android users won't be able to encrypt their messages, but the same goes for Android users who message iPhone users. So it's both Apple and Google won't pay for the server costs required to do E2E encryption for messages sent to the other's platform.

ianbetteridge said:

gatorguy said:

AppleInsider said:

Following years of pressure from Google for Apple to adopt the presently flawed RCS system within iMessage, Apple has committed to doing so during 2024.

Android does not have a true equivalent alternative to Apple's iMessage...

Ummm, yes they do. The equally secure and private Google Messages. Unfortunately, the initial implementation of RCS on the iPhone will not be end-to-end encrypted. Still showing a bit of stubbornness I suppose.

Keeping the blue bubble/green bubble distinction would be an advantage for Android users using the E2EE Google Messages (Apple users too if they understand what it means) since it will designate the conversation as potentially insecure. But I've been seeing claims the bubbles are going away. I don't know how true that is, as I thought blue and green indicated the level of encryption. 

It's not stubbornness, it's simply that the extensions which Google has made to RCS which support E2E encryption are proprietary and only available via the closed-source Google Messages app, and with service providers that run their customers' messages on Google (proprietary) Jibe platform. 

The reality is that Google end-to-end messaging system, while built on RCS, is as proprietary and closed as iMessage. That's why non-Google versions of Android such as Graphene which ship the stock (open source) messages app don't have support for encrypted RCS. If you want that on Android, you and all your friends have to be using Google's closed-off software. 

Great point! I always forget about the GMS certification end of things. Which is essentially Google's way of ensuring that, if you're going to use their "free and open" technology, you can't bypass their data harvesting mechanisms (apps and services). We're open, right up until the point where it affects our bottom line. Same reason why Apple doesn't open up their technology.

nubus said:

After a decade of being tone-deaf... what a surprise! Nice to see Apple become smart about politics. It would have been better if Apple had taken part in the design of the standard, but this is good. Much better than being forced as with USB-C, right-to-repair, and soon AppStore alternatives.

Because hey, if you invest in the R&D and come up with a well designed technology from the get-go, you should be forced to either give it away to everyone or switch to someone else's once they clone it. No point in being a company which actually tries to make money from creating well-designed new technology products when you can be an advertising company which gives all the technology they create (typically clone) away for free.

I'm wondering if this business model is going to start making its way into other professions too. Where, say, architects and engineers create buildings for free, and make money by installing cameras, microphones, and special wireless signal monitoring systems into those buildings. How far do we take this "everything must be free" mentality?

I get the fact that, eventually, interoperability is needed/desired. Would would be ideal is compensating the creator of the technology when it's decided that it should be opened up for interoperability. Much like the FRAND system on the hardware side of things. That would ensure that companies which want to focus on innovating and creating technology products can avoid being forced to fund their work via advertising, or cloned and owned by competitors who come along after them. And yes, the technology they create should be evaluated to determine if they truly added value to it rather than just repackaging something which already existed.