Tucked into Google I/O 2023 — the Silicon Valley tech behemoth’s most important developer conference in years, the company unveiled, among other things, an $1,800 foldable Pixel phone and a host of AI features on the product lineup — dumped by its biggest mobile rival.
During a two-hour keynote on Wednesday, Google took some time to talk about greening messaging between Android devices and the iPhone via RCS. RCS, or Rich Communication Services, is a more multimedia-friendly version of the SMS and MMS texting standards — think Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp-esque messaging but for good text messages.
Google Vice President Sameer Samath took advantage of the opportunity by sending a text message.
We hope that every mobile operating system gets the message and accepts RCS so that we can all chat as a group, no matter what device we use. She kissed her and laughed. from the audience at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View.
There is a history to this beef. In recent years, Google has adopted the RCS standard for its home messaging app, which offers features like emoji responses, high-quality images and videos, better group chats, and other benefits across Android devices. But Apple already has iMessage, which essentially achieves the same thing for its users. The continued ubiquity of the iPhone in the United States means there isn’t much incentive for Apple to include RCS features in its walled garden. So for Android users messages will be green and dim. A report from research firm Counterpoint, published Tuesday, puts the iPhone’s US market share at a staggering 53 percent.
Google has repeatedly urged Apple to incorporate RCS into its messaging platform in the name of fair texting, even going so far as to launch an entire website urging its competitor to do just that. But Apple CEO Tim Cook has clearly rubbished the idea, dismissing Google’s calls to say that iPhone users haven’t asked for the feature.
For now, while Samat boasts RCS of around 800 million people, there is a big hurdle in adoption until Cook buys it. And it doesn’t look like it will for a while: Cook told Vox reporter Liquan at an event last year. Hunt only bought his mom an iPhone because his mom uses an Android device and so he can’t see the videos Hunt sends.