Google Changed Messaging on Android and Says iMessage Excessively Affects Teens

Google took to Twitter this weekend to complain that iMessage is affecting today’s kids too much. The company responded to a Wall Street Journal report that detailed the insularity and social pressure that Apple’s walled garden creates among American teenagers. iMessage marks texts from iPhone users with a blue background and provides them with additional features, while texts from Android phones are marked with green and have only basic SMS functionality. According to the article: “Teens and college students said they fear ostracism associated with green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some posts being ostracized or singled out after abandoning the iPhone.” Google seems to think this is a problem.

“iMessage shouldn’t capitalize on bullying,”says the official Android Twitter account. “The correspondence should unite us, and there is a solution. Let’s fix it as one industry.”Google Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer also chimed in, saying, “Tethering Apple to iMessage is a documented strategy. Using peer pressure and intimidation as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that is founded on humanity and fairness. standards exist today to fix that.”

The “solution”that Google is offering here is RCS, or Rich Communication Services, a 2008 GSMA standard that is slowly gaining momentum as an update to SMS. RCS adds typing indicators, user presence, and improved image sharing in carrier messages. However, it’s a carrier standard that’s 14 years old, so it’s missing a lot of the things you’d want from a modern messaging service, like end-to-end encryption and support for non-telephone devices. Google is trying to override the outdated standard with its “Google Messaging”client, but the result is a lot of clunky solutions that aren’t as good as modern messaging services.

As RCS replaces SMS, Google is campaigning to force the industry to upgrade. After years of protests, all US carriers have joined the project, and there is some understanding among international carriers as well. The biggest adversary is Apple, which only supports SMS via iMessage.

Apple has never publicly dismissed the idea of ​​adding RCS to iMessage, but thanks to documents uncovered in Epic v. Apple, we know the company sees iMessage blocking as a valuable weapon. Adding RCS to iMessage and making it easier to communicate with Android users will only help weaken Apple’s walled garden, and the company has said it doesn’t want that.

In the US, iPhones are more popular than ever among young people. As the Wall Street Journal notes, “40% of U.S. consumers use an iPhone, but among consumers aged 18 to 24, more than 70% are iPhone users.”This success is attributed to Apple blocking applications such as iMessage.

Reap what you sow

Google is clearly seeing the popularity of iMessage as a problem, and the company hopes this public denunciation campaign will force Apple to change its mind about RCS. Forcing Google to advise other companies on messaging strategy is a ridiculous idea, as Google is probably the least trusted of all tech companies when it comes to messaging services. If a company really wants to do something with iMessage, it should try to compete with it.

As we recently detailed in a 25,000-word article, the history of Google messaging is a history of constant product launches and shutdowns. Thanks to the lack of a product focus or any top-down direction from the CEO of Google, no single division is really “responsible”for messaging. As a result, the company has released 13 half messaging products since iMessage launched in 2011. If Google has anyone to blame for iMessage’s dominance, it has to start with itself, as it has constantly sabotaged and abandoned its plans to create an iMessage competitor.