Google blasts Apple for being closed: deliberately hindering Android, iPhone user communication User SMS interoperability support not in place

You don't often see Google blast Apple so harshly in public, but of course it's also accusing the latter of taking "poor care" of Android users.

Google has publicly criticized Apple on its official Android website for failing to improve the user experience for iPhone and Android (Android) users to communicate with each other.

Some users have long complained about green message bubbles in cross-device messaging, such as poorly compressed video quality, lack of read receipts, and other headaches.

Google blames Apple for this, as the latter converts messages sent between iPhone and Android users into SMS and MMS, both of which were developed decades ago and designed primarily for the text-only era.

Google argues that Apple should use Rich Communication Services (RSC) for this feature, which they consider a "modern industry standard" that improves the user experience for sending text messages and making phone calls, as well as supporting content such as emojis, videos and images.

Android's official website says, "These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern communication standards when sending messages between iPhones and Android phones."

To address this embarrassment, Google has in recent months begun to not-so-subtly goad Apple into supporting RCS to enable most of the features that iMessage can offer on a messaging service that works across iOS / Android devices.

Since the I/O 2022 developer conference, Google has mentioned in several tweets that "all operating systems should be upgraded to support RCS".

Yet Apple, the maker of the iPhone, has long been reluctant to embrace a more open ecosystem. The company's executives even admitted in an internal email that bringing iMessage to Android would do more harm than good.

On the other hand, Google's push for RCS hasn't been all that smooth -- and it's taken considerable effort to get at least a wide range of carriers to support RCS.