Google finds fault with Apple’s iMessage platform for treating Android users like Second class citizens

Google has accused Apple of benefiting from bullying as part of a deliberate strategy to make Android users into second-class citizens on the iPhone-maker’s iMessage service.

Apple’s messaging service includes a number of iOS-exclusive features, like Memoji, and famously turns texts from Android users green instead of the iOS-native blue. This has turned iMessage into a status symbol among US teens, creating peer pressure for young people to buy iPhones and sometimes leading to the ostracization of Android users. Showing up in a group chat as a green bubble has become, for some, a social faux pas.

 

 

Although Apple’s iMessage strategy has long been apparent, internal emails sent by company executives that were surfaced during the recent Epic Games trial confirmed the conscious importance of this strategy.

Google’s intervention here is not purely altruistic, of course: the company would benefit hugely from Apple making iMessage available on Android. Google has also recently been pushing for the iPhone-maker to support next-generation texting standard RCS, which is intended to replace SMS and has already gathered support from major US carriers.

Google is also not well-placed to criticize other companies messaging strategies. What is most interesting is that the search giant is notoriously dysfunctional when it comes to messaging, and has launched 13 separate messaging apps since iMessage came out in 2011.