Google angry with Apple for bullying with its blue and green iMessage bubbles

New Delhi: Although Apple iMessage is not as popular in India as WhatsApp, its native messaging programme remains a popular form of communication in the United States, where iPhones dominate the phone market and have a big young userbase. Despite the fact that Apple offered FaceTime to Android customers last year in the midst of the COVID outbreak, its iMessage software has yet to reach Android users. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Senior Vice President of Platforms and Ecosystems at Google, has now chastised Apple for failing to use available technology to make iMessage open to everyone. He claims that Apple even "uses peer pressure and bullying to promote things."

Lockheimer made the same point in a Wall Street Journal piece headlined 'Why Apple's iMessage Is Winning: Teens Fear the Green Text Bubble.' The research effectively claims that Apple treats iMessage texts from iPhones and Android phones differently, resulting in a societal division. Teenagers are particularly susceptible to peer pressure. For starters, iMessage may accept messages from Android phones, but they are delivered as text messages with a green chat bubble. Similarly, Android users cannot send memojis to iMessage, which is only available to iPhone users. The chat bubble is blue when two iPhone users are communicating over iMessage.

According to Wall Street Journal report, Lockheimer argues, "there are no real technical or product causes for this issue." The solutions are currently there, and we encourage Apple to join the rest of the mobile sector in putting them into action. We believe that individuals should be able to connect with one another without artificial barriers. It simply does not have to be this way."

Android's official Twitter account also slammed Apple, saying, "iMessage should not gain from bullying." Texting should bring us together, and there is a solution. Let us work together to solve this as a single industry."

RCS, or Rich Communication Service, is the technology Lockheimer is referring to, which Google plans to roll out globally on Google Messages in 2020. "Group chats don't need to break this way," Lockheimer argues in another tweet. There is a Very Simple Solution. "Here's an open invitation to the people who can make this right: we're here to help," RCS is plainly indicated. To put it simply, RCS is a messaging standard that tries to improve on standard SMS technology. It basically turns the default messaging software into a WhatsApp or iMessage-like service that leverages Wi-Fi and allows you to transmit multi-media files, create group chats, and do other things. Android users will be able to share these benefits if iMessage embraces RCS.

Apple claims that making iMessage available on other platforms will make iOS and iPhones more vulnerable to hackers. However, analysts contend that iPhone users all around the world already use other services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, rendering the argument moot.