Google tries shaming Apple to 'fix' texting with 'Get the Message' campaign

Google's Get the Message campaign
Google's Get the Message campaign (Image credit: Google)

When Google hosted Google I/O this year, a segment of the event was dedicated to the company pushing on Apple to adopt RCS, a new messaging standard that is replacing SMS and MMS across Android devices.

Apple hasn't responded to the pressure yet and continues to only support SMS and MMS when an iPhone and Android device is texting each other. That silence has apparently led Google to launch a new campaign called "Get the Message":

It’s not about the color of the bubbles. It’s the blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and typing indicators, no texting over Wi-Fi, and more. These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.

What should Apple do instead?

Google says that the solution to broken messaging between iPhone and Android is RCS, a newer messaging technology that brings higher resolution to photos and videos, message reactions, and higher levels of privacy.

Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead. Solving the problem without changing your iPhone to iPhone conversations and making messaging better for everyone.

Google says that by switching to RCS, Apple would fix the following problems when messaging between iOS and Android:

  • Blurry photos and videos
  • Inability to leave group conversations
  • Problems sending text messages over Wi-Fi
  • Lack of end-to-end encryption
  • Inability to turn on read receipts
  • Hard to read due to the poor color contrast with green bubbles

While many of us use an iPhone and enjoy all of the above features, that immediately falls off when we message someone with an Android phone. RCS brings back a lot of the iMessage-specific features to all of us who need to communicate across operating systems.

You can learn more about Google's "Get the Message" campaign on its website.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.