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Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS
(www.androidcentral.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Google wants everyone's message data, that's why their pushing it so aggressively.
RCS is technically an open standard. But in reality it completely depends on Google's Jibe system to make it work for many carriers.
The recent anti competitive trials has shown Google is willing to pay apple billions for people's internet activity to go through them. With Google currently pushing anti iMessage ads to shame apple into supports RCS, Google has most likely offered Apple a lot of money to use RCS. Apple has decided it's not worth it.
Why apple isn't supporting RCS is unknown. But it either user privacy or user retention to their ecosystem. Either way they don't think more exposure to Google is good for their users. This 'open' standard is a joke. If it doesn't make Google money soon, they kill it like all their previous messenger projects.
RCS is e2ee..
They don't need your message contents to harvest data. They can see who you talk to, when you talk to them and the type of messages (text/images/videos).
Connecting people together can expand the amount of advertising impressions they can sell. If your speaking to someone at the same time they are googleing a new trampoline, Google can infer your likely to be interested in trampolines as well.
That's such fuzzy data that it really doesn't matter at all. Point is, my messages are encrypted, and Google can think I want a trampoline if they want to think that.
Plus you said Google wants everyones messaging data, but they literally aren't getting it. So no, that's not why they are pushing it hard.
Apple can also run their own RCS servers (my carrier does). They simply aren't supporting RCS because they LIKE that Android is shamed for having green bubbles. It would hurt Apple if their phones were more compatible with Android.
It's not unknown, it's clearly user retention. And it works in the US where they turned their users into salesmen pushing everyone to buy iPhones so they can use advanced features without having to install a free app.
User retention and RCS sucks. It has serious reliability issues.
Your getting downvoted for RCS issues. I've experienced them as well. It doesn't reliably send messages. It also fails to inform you the message failed and fails to fall back to SMS.