Google attacks iPhone on RCS—again.
Some weeks ago, Apple’s attack ad on Google hit our screens, with the iPhone maker’s short remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” slamming Chrome’s privacy deficiencies and pushing users to Safari. Now as iOS 18 hits millions of iPhones around the world, Google has released its own video ridiculing the update.
Apple’s iOS 18 is more about what’s missing than what has been released—with Apple Intelligence still to come and RCS lacking the full encryption users have come to expect. Both Google and GSMA—the mobile standard setter—have promised end-to-end security is on the way, but not any time soon. This bad news is now hitting users, with The Washington Post warning that RCS leaves “chats with Android friends still [with] security and other compromises that Apple could have avoided.”
And so while Apple iMessage users now have an upgraded experience when texting with Android users outside iPhone’s walled garden, it’s a major step-down from what’s currently on offer from WhatsApp (in particular) as well as other, fully secured over-the-top messengers: Signal and Facebook Messenger, for example.
RCS seems a sensitive subject for Apple. The company surprised everyone with its u-turn a year ago, having long resisted calls for RCS to make it onto iPhones. And its iOS 18 release—despite the fun of better images and typing indicators—all feels very bare bones. It’s still hard to tell what the company really feels about the move.
Google had been pushing hard to shame Apple into making the move, and was quick to welcome it when it came. But its latest Pixel versus iPhone video taunts Apple’s communication issues, the length of time it has taken to move, and how much more there is to do. “Now that iPhone finally has RCS,” Pixel says, “we have a breakthrough,” To which iPhone replies, “even though I know I still have work to do.”
RCS is more critical to Google than Apple. Despite its best efforts, Google has not managed to turn its Messages platform into anything approaching an iMessage equivalent for Android. Whether the simplicity, security or just blue bubble cachet, iMessage remains in a category of its own—in the US, at least. Ridiculing iPhone’s RCS update is dangerous ground for Google—it has much more to lose.
Android users have long favored WhatsApp, and Google has long taken the view that it needs Apple to upgrade cross-platform messaging to have any chance to change that. The irony for Apple is that its US iMessage stronghold has come under assault from Meta’s WhatsApp this year like never before. Mark Zuckerberg himself led the celebrations when his top messenger surpassed 100 million US users in July.
Ironically, Apple’s shift to RCS has helped fuel WhatsApp’s latest campaign which—unsurprisingly—promotes the fully secure, fully private cross-platform messaging it brings in the way no-one else can do as seamlessly and effectively.
WhatsApp privacy ad in NYC, Summer 2024
And that will be clear over the coming weeks for the millions of iPhone 16 buyers porting WhatsApp from their old to new phones. Over the years, this has become very more seamless and now is as easy as any other app and data on the phone, despite the end-to-end enclave within which it operates. Many of those doing the same with Signal will have seen quite the opposite. An hours long data transfer trying patience to such an extent that many will have started afresh.
All told, the danger for Google in particular is that RCS lands flat after the novelty buzz of some non-blurry images and typing eclipses. As I’ve commented before, it’s unclear what problem RCS on iPhone resolves, with WhatsApp and the new upgrade to enable third-party chats doesn’t do better and more securely.
RCS as an SMS upgrade is tightly rooted to mobile networks and carriers. That seems an archaic way to approach messaging between smartphones. In my view, this will now raise questions about better ways to deliver options for users and will push for tighter collaboration between Apple and Google, rather than reliance on the standard protocol. But while Google probably would, there’s no sign yet Apple wants to play.