November has been a big month for RCS, the mobile messaging protocol championed by Google, and now the company is capping it off with the announcement of a milestone and some festive new features. First, the number: According to Google, more than 1 billion monthly active users use RCS in Google Messages. This is huge considering that support was scarce just a few years ago, although not entirely Surprising since it has been the default messaging service on Android phones for a few years.
As for the new messaging features, some of them may look familiar to iOS users. There’s a new feature that links with your Google account to create a contact poster-like profile with your name and photo. Google is adding something called Photomoji, which lets you remove people from your photos and use the photos to react to messages like you would with an emoji. Apple offers something similar in iOS 17, although you must convert your cropped photos into stickers to add them to iMessage conversations. Based on an extremely scientific study of five of my friends, this is not catching on very quickly.
Google Messages will also let you attach an emoji when you send a voice message, what Google calls a “mood.” That’s a good way to help someone understand the content of your message at a glance. Emoji shared in group chats or used as reactions sometimes also include an animation. And in a little nod to the whole green bubble/blue bubble situation, Google Messages will now let you change the color of the chat bubbles in each of your conversations.
I spoke with VP and GM of Android Messaging Sanaz Ahari about the new features and where RCS is in general, which of course means asking about Apple. There’s good reason to be excited about RCS on the iPhone because, as Ahari aptly puts it, “group chats are really broken these days between Android and iOS.” Apple’s commitment to supporting the RCS 2.0 universal profile means that image and video sharing between platforms will be greatly improved, but Ahari acknowledges that the 2.0 specification does not include end-to-end encryption.
“We are actively working with GSMA (and Apple is a member of GSMA) to evolve the specification to include not only end-to-end encryption, but also many features that are not in the RCS specification that we have. “We are working to add back to the specification.” Threaded replies, read receipts, and reactions are some of those features that are unlikely to be supported for iPhone users as the standard exists today. “Overall, what we expect is that modern messaging capabilities and end-to-end encryption will be a cross-platform reality.”
That’s all a long way off, but in the meantime, Google’s new messaging features will be coming to RCS users on Android phones. Today’s feature drop also includes some useful Wear OS smart home integrations so you can set the status of your Google Home, activate a group of lights, or start a routine from your watch. It all starts today, with new messaging features debuting for the first time in open beta.
