cross-posted from: https://kbin.projectsegfau.lt/m/tech@kbin.social/t/26889
Google just announced that all RCS conversations in Messages are now fully end-to-end encrypted, even in group chats. RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and is replacing traditional text and picture messaging, providing you with more dynamic and secure features. With RCS enabled, you can share high-res photos and videos, see typing indicators for your…
You bet it’s end to end and encrypted with my key and your key and our friends key the CIA’s key… Wait, what?
/s… I hope
Now, open up the RCS API to third party texting apps… Like you said you would many years ago
But everything still kept in their cloud right?
Definitely happy that this is happening, good on them. However in practice since most of my friends are on iOS I’m still reduced to SMS/MMS and a terrible user experience
There’s an app currently in beta called Beeper that aggregates a bunch of chat apps into one and also lets Android users connect to iMessage using an Apple ID. Highly recommend getting on the wait-list for it, the app has been great and the team working on it are very responsive and transparent.
Unfortunately RCS support is still in active development so anyone using it may not want to connect their number yet (unless they’re cool with SMS’ing with other Androids).
Oh yeah I heard about that! Do you use it? How’s the iMessage support on Android? Ideally I’d love if my chats with Android users go over RCS but chats with Apple users go over iMessage.
That all said relaying my chats through a 3rd party doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside…
Reminds me how much I hate Apple.
Thanks Google for making Android.
Now please turn the evil knob down a notch and go back being the awesome company you once were.
Edit: typo
Apple purposely will not integrate this to keep a walled garden around their ecosystem and make messaging between apole/Android a shit experience.
In a perfect world everyone would just adopt rcs, it’s better for consumers but Apple only gives a shit about branding/$$$.
Aside from the fact that Google finally implementing E2EE in RCS not having anything at all to do with Apple, I’m confused.
Apple developed a fully encrypted messaging system 16 years ago, 4 years later RCS was developed but wasn’t even adopted by all three major US carriers until 2 years ago (much more complicated than just this as they refused to work together on Universal Profile standards and Google has so ‘valiantly’ stepped in to do it without them), and Apple is the bad guy for not switching to a competitors standard that was (until now) less secure, uses googles back end services, is arguably less capable, has an extremely poor desktop access experience, is less intuitive to enable, and takes away a competitive advantage? All while other E2EE messaging apps have been available on both iOS and Android for years.
Why not push for google to adopt iMessage as a standard instead? Maybe google has been holding iMessage back for 16 years. Maybe Apple isn’t holding rcs back but carriers are. Or maybe it’s the GSMA. Or maybe it’s a larger systemic issue with capitalism. Or maybe it’s one of any number of other issues that makes it disadvantageous for Apple and Google to work together on this.
This article, cancerous as the site is on mobile, does a good job breaking down the issue and how it’s not as clear cut as folks here are trying to make it: https://www.androidpolice.com/google-rcs-messaging-feud-apple-imessage/
At the end of the day, y’all being angry at Apple about RCS sounds just a bit like simping for google and falling prey to their marketing campaign to try and win the messaging war. Im not really interested in experiencing another chromium situation but with messaging. Particularly when WhatsApp is king in the messaging space globally.
The one thing that feels off to me about Google’s implementation is that it’s not vendor agnostic and all comms would need to go through Google’s servers to work. The E2EE bit is an entirely Google specific extension to RCS, for example. The last thing we need is another chromium situation in a different area.
If it wasn’t a Google specific extension, phone networks around the world would need to pick up the pace and adopt RCS, but also they’d need to keep up to date with the latest version of the standard to ensure the functionality is supported. Now, looking at phone networks’ previous track record, they’re really not going to implement it unless they’re forced to and they’ll do so at a real snails pace.
At this point I’d agree that Apple not adopting RCS is really not helpful here.
I feel the EU’s Digital Market Act that’s forcing messenger applications to be interoperable with each other is going to be a much more viable option towards that perfect world scenario. The IETF is even fleshing out a common protocol for it, MIMI with MLS.
Doesn’t really explain what google enabling E2E on RCA has to do with Apple
