Google argues iMessage should be regulated by the EU's Digital Markets Act
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I really don't know what the answer to all these related questions are (App stores and App store fees and payment systems). But it does seem to me that most of these biggest companies should be tamped down in some way. Not sure I know what the exact right answer is, though.
AT&T was doing the same shit: you have to use only manufacturer provided equipment, you have to communicate like we want you to. The online world has yet to have a Carterphone moment, where users are freed from the mothership's shackles.
Can anyone explain what is it that is so good that you end up using a solution that 40% in the USA and 60% in the rest of the world cannot use?
Otherwise you need to sign up and log in to some other service. Meaning everyone you talk to needs to do the same. With the SMS fallback this doesn’t “feel” like that.
On the other side, with iMessage, there is a huge chance somebody does not have it, and worst, cannot have it because they don't have an iPhone. Again, 40% of the people in the USA owns an Android phone. Is a lot.
WhatsApp has basically zero market penetration in North America, unlike Europe, so there's no network effect to speak of.
I lived in the US for 1.5 years between 2010 and 2009, and we all used WhatsApp. I never heard or used iMessage.
I have honestly been curious why the rest of the world doesn't do this? Was SMS not used as much?
(I dated someone for a while who had this very old grandfathered phone plan that she liked, which didn't include unlimited SMS. This was in 2016-2018; at the time she was the only person I used Whatsapp to text with.)
The US still had huge pager numbers when consumers in the EU was all in on text messages.
For example this article discusses low SMS usage in the US from 2000:
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/technology/us-is-lagging-...
Just like you were late to dropping cheques vs chip and pin, the US has been a laggard in consumer adoption of some technologies. Might be something to do with the relative power of your state governments vs federal meaning your infrastructure is sometimes less co-ordinated, as a guess.
1. SMSes were fairly expensive, and we had to pay per-message both to send and receive them.
2. Most people I knew (I was in college at the time) didn't even have cell phones (due to cost?). My dad even worked for Verizon, and he and my mom got them fairly late. I remember going on a trip to NYC in the summer of 2000, and my mom lent me her cell phone for emergencies. I didn't get my own cell phone until 2002.
I don't think I knew anyone with a pager at that point. My dad used to carry one for on-call notifications for his job in the 80s & 90s, but by 2000 he had the cell phone. The joke in my circles at that point was that pagers were for drug dealers. I know there was still heavy (non-drug-dealer) pager use in the US back then, though.
Then I really don't understand why did the EU just not stick with SMS (and iMessage). Like what was the value of going with a new app.
I was just using this same number with SMS on dumb phones... why would I switch?
We did use SMS extensively in the early 2000s. But many people also used things like Google Talk (and MSN Messenger on the PC) early on as it allowed you to send more than just text. MMS never really took off because not all phones supported it the same way and a lot of carriers charged for it (it also felt clunky).
Once you get used to one app, it's easy to move to another one. WhatsApp quickly took off as it was very easy to set up (install, enter phone number, you're done), worked on literally any phone OS and was simple to use.
It's a bit like wondering why everyone is using Slack when there's E-mail.
iMessage was a non-starter because the iphone was just not that popular here (and still isn't what the majority use in most countries), so using an app that only works with a phone that less than half of your friends use made no sense.
So the question is, why won't you switch?
In my home country, lots of people just had a BlackBerry because they wanted to do better chat. Then WhatsApp came, which did not require a BlackBerry worked in all types of phones (Android and iOS included), it used your same phone number, it did not charge by message, could do images, videos, groups, the interface was great, and it spread like fire.
Let's look at these:
> limited characters
True, however for quite some time now smart phones have handled this just fine or worst case you would get multiple messages with "1/2" or whatever. With threads this is a non issue.
> cannot send videos, cannot send images
While technically true, MMS fixed that was was a standard that just expanded on SMS.
> cannot do groups.
I have done plenty of SMS groups with android users so that clearly isn't true and is achievable with software.
> it was charged by message
While true, Unlimted texting (at least in the US) was a fairly normal thing before smart phones so I consider that more a carrier problem than a SMS problem and since that predated apps in the first place I don't think its a valid argument.
> the interface really sucked.
I mean considering even iMessage still just uses the same interface. So is the really a SMS problem? RCS and iMessage just add a couple nice to have but far from required features (and in some cases like stickers ANNOYING FEATURES) so if you think the interface sucks for SMS are we really fixing it with RCS or iMessage? It doesn't seem like it.
I feel like unlimited texting was standard here since 2007 at least.
Most networks implemented some kind of Top up €20, get 200 free minutes, 200 free texts, unlimited same-network texts, and X GB of data for the month.
WhatsApp came in, which meant that that all networks could now talk to each other using the Data allowance for free, essentially - which I think convinced people to use WhatsApp rather than dwindle down their network text quota.
Messages is installed by default on iPhones, so people who are used to using SMS (most people) just use iMessage, and if they're communicating with someone without an iPhone, the app just degrades back to SMS.
I don't care which, or anything else is used, as long as it's platform independent, secure, seamless, and enables all the features of modern messaging platforms.
Wife has an iPhone I have an android. One of the big problems with that downgrade is it's really one sided.
An example.
If I send her a photo, or video, google will send a link to it instead, unique to that message.. so she will see the full sized video or photo.
If she sends me a photo or video, it uses MMS... And it's potato quality.
I would settle to have apple solve that problem. Because it's solely on apple's side to solve that. But I would ultimately like there to be a successor to SMS/MMS... And soon.
You are describing WhatsApp (or telegram or signal) or am I missing something?
To decide to use WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram etc I would have to find out if they even have that service/app set up or not. And they have to have the app installed and signed in etc.
With iMessage/SMS there is no setup, no sign-in, no approval process or anything.
This is exactly how it happens, you just add someone's phone number to your address book and... and it works? All those services rely on the phone numbers to discover if you can message to the other party. You literally see if the addressee can be called/sent message through WhatsApp.
Sure, it's not in your Messages app, but that's because Apple doesn't allow you to see any messaging platforms there except theirs?
... do you understand what iMessage is just another app, the only difference is what it's shipped with every iPhone and that's why it works?
Apple has replaced a universal protocol, SMS, with their own app which is not available anywhere except iOS. And you are happy and try to convince everyone what this is totally fine. You are okay for people to buy an iPhone yet you are totally opposed to download a free app. Exactly what Apple wants.
>> With iMessage/SMS there is no setup, no sign-in, no approval process or anything.
There is a setup - buying an iOS device, there is a sign-in - creating and logging into iCloud or whatever it's called account, there is an approval process - when you create the account you give Apple all what's in the EULA and it's a lot.
Oh, and if Google would replace, ahem, enhance SMS with their own proprietary app you would be the first to cry.
> Oh, and if Google would replace, ahem, enhance SMS with their own proprietary app you would be the first to cry.
I don't see any reason to object if it follows the same fallback pattern that iMessage does. I mean, in practice the current situation with RCS functions identically to iMessage -- it negotiates whether the person you're trying to message supports a fancier communication system, and if not it falls back to SMS. (The difference is that Apple could support RCS if it wanted to. But since it currently doesn't, there's no practical difference in experience to the users.)
What would be objectionable would be if Google (or Apple) switched the default texting app on their OS to only support a communication protocol that the other OS didn't support.
They are answering the question why they (and in their mind - everyone else/sane/both) wouldn't ever use anything other than iMessage. They literally can't understand what iMessage is literally just another app, with the only difference is what it's default. I'm not sure what [most] people even understand how it uses their phone number[0]
> but claiming that they don't understand their own answer is a bit weird.
Well, they don't. I would point out to "I do not need to ask them to download/register on iMessages". Quite unsurprisingly, if both parties already have Signal/Whatsapp/whatever they don't need to download or register on it, too.
> I don't see any reason to object if it follows the same fallback pattern that iMessage does
There was quite a shock for some people what Apple actually gives up info on their customers when the law enforcement comes with an order. Those people really believed in a (quite clever I must say) totally-not-an-ad rumour what Apple does not give out any info. So while there is no objective reasons to object, those people would, just because it's Google or not Apple.
Though I doubt it would happen, the ship sailed along with Google+/Hangouts.
[0] showerthought: there is an intersecting Venn diagram of people who doesn't use Signal 'because phone number' yet use iMessage.
And one last thing, RCS is still SMS in it's spirit - not as means to deliver text, but as means for cellular providers to print money from the thin air. Do you know how much it costed for the celluar provider to send one SMS between it's own customers on GSM?
...since all the answers focused on it being a convenient progressive enhancement to the SMS experience, I'm pretty sure they do understand this.
> I would point out to "I do not need to ask them to download/register on iMessages".
Yeah, because the selling point is the aforementioned convenient progressive enhancement. You try to text someone, and if you both have iMessage it automatically becomes better. Would it be nice if Apple had some sort of framework so their messaging app let other messaging services integrate into it so that it wasn't only iMessage that benefited from this quiet upgrade? Yes, but I can see how that'd be an excessively complicated app to maintain.
> There was quite a shock for some people what Apple actually gives up info on their customers when the law enforcement comes with an order.
You're a bit of a goalpost-mover, aren't you?
To engage on the law enforcement and privacy aspect despite it being unrelated to the prior point: falling back from one logged and requestable messaging protocol (SMS) to a different slightly less-logged and less-requestable method (iMessage) is fine. Plus, unless Apple has been actually lying in their marketing, iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, with the only backdoor being that law enforcement can get a search warrant for your unencrypted backups. But there's also a way to turn on a fully encrypted backup, once you go through sufficient warnings that customer service won't be able to help you if you forget your password, and if you do that it's legitimately secure from law enforcement.
> [0] showerthought: there is an intersecting Venn diagram of people who doesn't use Signal 'because phone number' yet use iMessage.
It's because people can have different goals for different products. Signal markets itself as a secure messaging service, with a notable focus in activist communities, and so having to tie you to a super identifiable piece of information is a bit strange. iMessage is just texting-but-better, and automatically steps in when the alternative would have been sending a SMS.
If we ignore 'and requires iPhone for the other party to receive anything other than text' then yes.
> Yes, but I can see how that'd be an excessively complicated app to maintain
Oh, poor and people stranded Apple can't maintain that! Temporarily embarrassed millionaires again?
> You're a bit of a goalpost-mover, aren't you?
Just progressively degrade to personal insults, why are you even bothering?
It was a direct callout to a classical appledoublethink, when it's okay for Apple to do something yet not okay for not-Apple to do the same.
> falling back from one logged and requestable messaging protocol (SMS) to a different slightly less-logged and less-requestable method (iMessage) is fine
Replace iMessage with any other service and it's the same. And with same guarantees if backups are fully encrypted. But again, this has nothing with the topic of this thread, only for the peculiar way of thinking of some Apple fanboys.
> It's because people can have different goals for different products
> Signal markets itself as a secure messaging service, with a notable focus in activist communities
Yes, but if you don't use Signal for 'activist communities' then what? You don't do things? Or you just use iMessage for participating in those activities?
They can also receive images! SMS does support sending those, after all.
> Just progressively degrade to personal insults, why are you even bothering?
Pointing out argumentative flaws isn't really a personal insult. I'm still talking to you because your communication style reminds me of my mother-in-law who recently passed away, so it's a whole nostalgia thing really. :D
> when it's okay for Apple to do something yet not okay for not-Apple to do the same.
Yeah, but it was a weird swerve into an unrelated issue, given that nobody in the thread had been engaging in that doublethink. I certainly wasn't -- my whole position here has been that so long as there's a fallback it's fine for both Apple and Google to be having this progressive-enhancement setup, after all.
> Yes, but if you don't use Signal for 'activist communities' then what? You don't do things? Or you just use iMessage for participating in those activities?
I'd imagine that if you're such a person you'd either stick to in-person communications, be suitably vague in less-secure communications, or use one of the various secure messaging services out there which don't require a phone number. Also, "Signal requiring a phone number means I'm identifiable on it, so I might as well use iMessage anyway since it's convenient and not any less secure overall" is a coherent stance for someone to take, depending on how they weight their risks.
Haven't they done that repeatedly?
If I send a message through the Android Messages app, I know it will get to its destination (well, modulo occasional SMS unreliability). I don't have to know or care if the recipient has the right app or not. Everyone can receive SMS.
I do have a bunch of other messaging apps on my phone, but, for the most part, I've had to actively get people to install those apps in order to use them (or they've explicitly asked me if I have so-and-so messaging platform).
For people I tend to chat with often, I'll usually try to get them to install Signal if they don't have it. But otherwise, I don't really have the energy to evangelize anything, so I just use SMS (or, if I'm really lucky, and they also use Android -- rare! -- RCS) with them.
I'm frankly just completely sick of this situation. If iMessage & RCS were both built into the Android Messages app, I probably wouldn't use anything else. The only reason I use other platforms at all is because I like E2EE, the ability to send photos and videos that don't have to be downscaled and recompressed into oblivion, and non-terrible group chat management. iMessage and RCS fix all of those things.
Get out of this 3rd world country *smug_face*
Honestly I do remember when I used the SMS lately - a once this year to contact a person whose contact was relayed to me through 3rd party. As soon as we confirmed what we are those who we are we moved on to Telegram. In the retrospect I should had just added his number to the address book and I would had seen what he is available on Telegram from the start, but I was in quite stressed state at that moment (hence the need to contact him, but that's the other story). But before that? Don't have an idea.
But overall people here just outright tell you on what platform they prefer to talk[0] from the start so you know it and your 'I need to ask people to install...' sounds... quite weird. Between all the people and different social media there is always at least WhatsApp or Telegram what everyone have.[2]
Another reason people have these apps is what they:
a) work; sure SMS do work, but sending a photo? Video? No way
b) priceless - sure, you pay for the traffic plan, but you pay for it anyway and it's extremely common now for providers to even give out a 'free' traffic for messengers. SMS still do cost money (at least for the crossprovider messages) and MMS... let's forget what MMS even existed. They are ugly and cost a ton. I'm not even sure young people, like younger than 25 even know what MMS is.
c) all messengers provide a way to conveniently send photos, voice messages (UGH!), video messages and place voice and video calls. All the things which are unavailable with SMS.
Honestly, after moving to 3G and further SMS doesn't even make sense - they are emulated on all levels and no longer a physical protocol. You can replace it with POEM (plain old email messaging) and it would be better on all occasions[1]
So yes, using SMS as anything is just another pointless American thing, along with price tags without tax and gaps under toilet stalls. Everyone else moved on because it's better. But because "it's the way" they "need it"(tm) and hence are quite defensive of anything what can even remotely change the status quo.
[0] and Instagram doesn't use the phone numbers, so adding to the phone book wouldn't help with autodiscover?
[1] hey, remember sms2email gateways? Email2sms?
[2] and amusingly enough I don't think most of people even knows what iMessage is, because even on iPhones they do use other messenger apps.
The thing you're not grasping here is that SMS exists on every phone. WhatsApp does not. Signal does not. Telegram does not.
Communication benefits massively from network effects. In the US, most people do not use third-party messaging apps. Those who do -- and I have Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp on my phone, so I'm in this group -- are in a minority. People who have multiple messaging apps are even more in the minority.
For Americans, third-party messaging services don't offer any significant benefits, either. Most people can't care about encryption. And I can easily send various media -- photos, videos, etc. -- via the default text messaging app on my phone. The cost is transparent to Americans, because phone plans have always been expensive -- and, frankly, they wouldn't get cheaper without free SMS/MMS, which is a point driven home by broadband prices (which are equally expensive in the US in comparison, despite not having this artificial cross-provider SMS cost).
I mean, Telegram and WhatsApp are all available in the US. I don't quite get your sense of smug superiority about which specific flavor of multinational corporation sponsored messaging app you use.
Did you read the thread? People up there literally question why they need to bother with anything else than SMS and iMessage. More so, they in GTFOMyLawn mode about using anything else than iMessage.
> which specific flavor of multinational corporation sponsored messaging app
There is one difference between Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp and iMessage. Do I need to spell it out?
> sense of smug
That was about using SMS, not iMessage and had a lot of implied /s.
While not exactly the same it is useful
I'd be surprised if iMessage users think as much about this as much as Android users and/or Google execs do.
I am guessing you're not a teenager in highschool.
I like Messages, I think it’s great, but that doesn’t explain what happened here.
Default messaging app is simpler - if they have iMessage it goes there, if not it's SMS. I can be confident of delivery, and it's no hassle.
With Messages.app, I can communicate with 100% of my contacts without switching apps. The question isn’t why I haven’t moved to something else, but why I would ever want to.
1. Are the people I chat with on there?
2. Is it free?
3. Do I have to install something?
4. Is it easy to use/sign up?
5. Does it have the bells and whistles I want?
..
X. What does end to end encryption mean?
The argument is that Apple not allowing businesses to use a protocol on par with iMessage is the issue here.
Sounds like spam to me
The goal isn't a more locked-down phone, it's transparent communications infrastructure that inherently resists attackers. Anything else is an imperfect solution that relies on trust more than mechanical security. If Apple wants to lead the way on that, they should do the world a favor and propose their own open SMS encryption standard. As it stands, their 'ours is better but we wont show you' approach is about as obvious as security theater gets.
Apple has an iMessage for Business service. You can use it to chat directly to representatives of enrolled businesses. Right from iMessage.
Google wants to use that and the DMA to create precedents that they can use against Apple in their quest to get access to iMessage.
It’s fairly transparent, IMHO.
Dear Google, if we wanted your crappy messaging service we would have bought an android phone. Thanks, the users.
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38189869
However kinda related I am curious about RCS. I tried looking this up but I can't find much concrete information on it. Is it actually universally E2E or only some? I find some reddit posts implying it's some.
Do all RCS messages go through Google's servers? Or some other central servers that are not the involved carriers.
The E2EE on RCS is an extension to the protocol developed by Google. I don't know who has implemented it other than Google. So if a user is on a carrier that does their own RCS impl (many carriers piggyback off of Google's so they don't have to deal with it), they may not have E2EE.
> Do all RCS messages go through Google's servers?
If your carrier isn't using Google's implementation, and you're messaging someone on a carrier also not using Google's implementation, then it won't go through Google's servers. Otherwise, it will. In theory, this won't matter, assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly and securely. I don't know if an audit has been done, though.
There's also the case where one person is on a carrier using Google's impl, and the other is on a carrier that is not, and that carrier has not implemented E2EE. Then the message will go through Google's servers, and Google will be able to read it.
This is how I understand it, anyway; I don't intimately know the details of the protocol, so this might not be 100% correct.
I am perfectly fine with Apple not rushing to implement RCS. It may be a business decision for their part but any chance that the messages information will go through Google's servers is a full no go for me and is not a valid alternative in my opinion.
Even if it is encrypted (which seems to not be guaranteed anyways), it still gives Google data I don't care for them to have.
If you do use iPhone then you could selectively choose not to RCS texts contacts that you know use a Google RCS implementation.
If RCS goes through my carrier it is up to my carrier if it's Google's implementation or not? Meaning Google's servers or not?
If the person I am talking too is on an Android phone I would also assume the same, that the text is likely going through Google's servers at some point.
Needing to know whether or not a specific contact is using Google's RCS implementation seems like quite the hassle when "Google" is the flaw for RCS in my opinion.
If I am misunderstanding, I would love to be corrected.
I get so much SMS and email spam. I get so little iMessage spam. If getting green texts from Android users is the price I have to pay, so be it.
Of course they won't, because there won't be feature parity. The point of SMSes remaining green even though that they are largely without cost is because it signals to the user that iMessage's/Facetime's features aren't available.
Google who argued that apple's designs aren't worthy of protection are now arguing that the colour of a freaking text bubble has great importance. Which one is it?
Of the new proposed changes, I can see so few actually rendering any net benefit to the consumer and EU businesses. There is so much wishful thinking going on here.
Do EU lawmakers believe that these changes will let EU tech businesses shoehorn themselves into these large, difficult to compete against platforms? It is not clear that it'll just be a land rush lead by large american tech companies. Then for any EU companies that do find a niche, they will simply be bought out - just like how the EU's AI darlings were.
It's like they have been baited into this maliciously: why wouldn't the EU introduce changes in a controlled roll out, where they can manage unintended consequences and limit the political fallout for problems that arise. Doing all of this at once is insanely risk-filled, and I feel this will put the journey to consumer protections on the back foot. A politician is not going to have the appetite to delve into this if it turns into toxic soup, meanwhile other countries progress will stall as they gesture warningly at the EU's mistakes.
Network effects also aren’t really all that bad. Would you want 15 apps that you have to rotate through to communicate to different people with, all with different features and capabilities? Probably not. You’d build some protocol on top to make that easier. But then someone says hey you need to open up your protocol and support my protocol and on and on we go.
The crux of this story and most similar stories is that Apple went and made the best product and it’s so good that others can’t compete with it. If the opposite were true we’d just have people battling it out like we used to with video game consoles. Instead we have gigantic multi-hundred billion $ companies attacking Apple’s products and services with big government tools.
There is nothing stopping anyone from using open protocols or different messaging apps today.
What’s so frustrating about Google’s attempt to leverage lobbyists to handicap Apple is that customers did coalesce around an app: iMessage, and all of this talk about “open protocols” is just marketing. The protocols you want to use are already here and already open!
“Open” is a nice idea but doesn’t work in practice here which is why no matter what we have many chat apps and poor cross-compatibility because companies building these apps don’t want it. And again, we already have these and they are clearly inferior.
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a...
..for the purposes of invading user privacy no less.
Can't have iMessage out there free from Google Ads can we? And we certainly wouldn't want all those iMessage users to not have the pleasure of having their data sold to info brokers? That's a human right isn't it? /s
These tech firms are just wayy too powerful. It's like if you take one down, the others say, "Awesome!!!", and they start selling the data that we've now legally obliged the first tech firm to give them access to.
Today, if an iPhone user sends a message to an Android user, that message is sent via SMS. If Google wanted, it could already scrape the message. What would change if the protocol was open and the message was sent to the Android device using iMessage?
There is no expectation for Apple to give Google read/write access to the iMessage database (not that it exists, but still). What is the downside of users being able to interoperate and use the protocol?