Google and major mobile carriers want Europe to regulate Apple's iMessage platform
Google and major mobile carriers want Europe to regulate Apple's iMessage platform
The EU's Digital Market Act prohibits Apple and other tech giants from favoring their own systems.
The long fight to make Apple's iMessage compatible with all devices has raged with little to show for it. But Google (de facto leader of the charge) and other mobile operators are now leveraging the European Union's Digital Market Act (DMA), according to the Financial Times. The law, which goes into effect in 2024, requires that "gatekeepers" not favor their own systems or limit third parties from interoperating within them. Gatekeepers are any company that meets specific financial and usage qualifications, including Google's parent company Alphabet, Apple, Samsung and others.
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Google and company can go fuck themselves on this one, and I'm usually the first one to bash on Apple for selling overpriced status symbols.
I'm frankly amazed at how much importance Google gives iMessage, when it's not the number 1 messaging app anywhere in the world. Hell, even if you assume Apple halved its report of monthly active users in Europe, that's 90 million people in Europe. Significant, but less than 25% of the total population of the EU
Outside USA and Canada, you'll be hard pressed to find people who give a damn about iMessage, because most are using a different, cross compatible app anyway, like Whatsapp or Telegram, even across most European countries.
Why would you be against standardizing messaging over the net? How is that a bad thing?
Because Google are trying to get regulators involved when it doesn’t really affect anyone?
Seems like a bad idea on principle
In my opinion, ALL nessaging apps should be compatible with each other. It should be like email, just different clients on the same protocol. I know it won't happen anytime soon (if ever in my life), but I'd like that. And we should start somewhere. Maybe here.
- Because those aren't internet messages, RCS is supposed to supersede SMS and MMS, which is how Google whatever (hangouts? talk? messages?) sends messages to iPhone numbers. Meanwhile, apple-apple communication via iMessage is done via internet
- Because the standard is mostly controlled by Google and Samsung, Apple's biggest rivals in the mobile space
- Because Google has been completely anal about being easily spotted in iPhone conversations for quite a while. It is pretty obvious that this has nothing to do with using better standards. AFAIK, even phones that can use RCS have it turned off by default.
- Because anyone with an internet connection already has access to several widely used apps that do much more than RCS does
SMS would basically be dead if Apple adopted RCS, that's why it's important. SMS needs to die.
Because apparently you get very annoying workarounds from the incompatibility.