The European Commission, at the heart of Google’s fight. It is with the authorities of the Old Continent that, according to the Financial Times, the American giant is seeking to win its case in the area of instant messaging interoperability. The media thus reveals that a letter signed by a representative of Google, but also operators such as Orange, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, requests from the Commission that the iMessage application be included on the list of services concerned by Digital Market Act (DMA), already mentioned in our columns. Its main idea is that so-called “essential” services provided by digital giants must be open to competition, to give the user the choice of using them or not.
Put an end to the “green bubble”
Google is campaigning for the widespread use of the RCS (Rich Communication Service) communication protocol, integrated in particular into its Messages application and authorizing the sending of photos, documents, stickers and other reactions. The Mountain View firm has shown its desire, for many months, to see this same RCS integrated into Apple’s messaging application, iMessage. The latter retains its proprietary protocol and, when exchanging messages with smartphones of a brand other than that of Apple, simply switches to SMS; the famous green bubble, replacing the blue iMessage bubble, is then displayed, a source of ridicule, particularly among American teenagers. A few weeks ago, Google launched a communication operation targeting Apple, in which the latter’s service was compared to a pagerthat is to say a beeper, as existed in the 1990s. has been…
With the letter sent to the European Commission, the objective is to convince Europe that, despite the arguments put forward by Apple to circumvent the DMA – iMessage is only one of the messaging applications available on iPhones and does not require any payment to its users — iMessage remains a fundamental application within the Apple ecosystem, of which the manufacturer is the guardian. For the moment, the European Commission has not provided any comments on the follow-up to be given to the recriminations of Google and the signatory operators. However, indicates the Financial Timesshe is continuing her investigation, and should deliver her verdict by February 2024.
It should be remembered that the weight of Europe is not negligible for Apple, since this same DMA predicts that Apple, by spring 2024, will probably have to authorize the side-loading, that is to say the installation of applications from portals other than the AppStore. It was also Europe which imposed the use of USB-C, the latter having ousted the Lightning connector from Apple’s iPhone 15s.