The long fight to make Apple’s iMessage compatible with all devices has raged with little to show for it. But Google (de facto leader of the charge) and other mobile operators are now leveraging the European Union’s Digital Market Act (DMA), according to the Financial Times. The law, which goes into effect in 2024, requires that “gatekeepers” not favor their own systems or limit third parties from interoperating within them. Gatekeepers are any company that meets specific financial and usage qualifications, including Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple, Samsung and others.
Doesn’t everyone hate it when google extends APIs? Think it’s called EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish). They have a history of killing standards as soon as they have enough market share.
If you change off of googles servers you lose features. I’d consider that no longer an open platform. So despite not needing to use their implementation, if you want the modern features RCS is often advertised as having, you have to go through google. That’s not an open standard.
The only 2 features I’m aware of the you lose are e2ee and those sticker things, all other modern features in RCS are present in the Universal Profile and there’s no reason that e2ee won’t come to the Universal Profile in time.
Like I said I’m not enthralled that Google is the one bringing RCS to the US, but I prefer Google over the carriers (Who were supposed to do it in the first place)