5 ms·

Is this really worth fighting over? Blue bubble vs green bubble? Why is this a governance issue?

sbuk 3y ago
Globally, iMessage is way down the pecking order; the rest of the World uses, in order, WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Snapchat. Google are bitter because it cannot get a decent service to compete despite having 70% of the global market and despite so many different attempts, which is largely down to their institutional ADHD and confused product strategy. Their claim that iMessage is a "core" service under the DMA is laughable and spiteful. If they give a crap, they ought to be going after Meta, which has by far and away the most significant part of the European messaging marketplace.
- sjg 3y ago
  I believe Google - WhatsApp issue is coming next year thanks to the EU (https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/16deuim/europe_designated_whatsapps_service_as_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/16deuim/europe...) [EU LInk - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_4328 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...] Will be interesting to see what happens although Apple isn't defined as a Gatekeeper in Europe yet, due to market share of iMessage however that may changed based on another investigation later in the year. I wouldn't be surprised if both of these events are relate
- olyjohn 3y ago
  Google is so fucking dumb. They had the market with Hangouts. Everybody used to be on it. And they fucking burned hangouts users over and over, and now nobody uses it. They blew it, and now they should suck it up and realize they can't compete and are not going to be able to compete for years now because of how they fucked their users multiple times. Nobody is going to want to use a Google product for their messaging for a long time, until their trust is rebuilt. I guess this means their only path is for them to start suing everybody until something opens up for them. What they should do, it just give it up. This kind of shit is not good for anybody. Using the guise of openness, by saying Apple's shit is not open is hypocritical as fuck too.
tinus_hn 3y ago
How about we have a talk about Google chat. I don’t remember Google announcing it would be opened up. Or does their requirement only apply to successful services?
- jkaplowitz 3y ago
  Yes, these EU rules only apply to services with a European user count above a certain threshold, and therefore not to unsuccessful services. The product currently named Google Chat is Google’s replacement for Google Hangouts for the purpose of Internet-based individual and group asynchronous chat purposes, that’s (badly) attempting to compete with Slack and Microsoft Teams rather than iMessage. Google’s iMessage competitor is already open for interoperability, supporting not only SMS (like iMessage) but also the RCS standard for rich individual and group asynchronous messages, which Apple could add RCS to iMessage but doesn’t want to. So, within the product space in which iMessage is the US market leader (and which WhatsApp leads in Europe), Google already is open and interoperable like the EU would want, but Apple isn’t. In this comment I’m not discussing motivations or making a judgment (beyond agreeing that Google Chat isn’t very successful), just describing facts. Disclosure: I used to work for Google, but not for more than 8.5 years now, and I never worked on or set policy for any of the products I’m discussing in this comment. I’m speaking here only on my own behalf, not on Google’s, nor relying on any Google-internal information for what I’ve said above.
  - sbuk 3y ago
    Is the encryption extension open? Who will manage message transport? Can they guarantee the near zero spam iMessage users currently enjoy?
    - jkaplowitz 3y ago
      To the best of my knowledge, Google has published a paper or two about their end to end encryption extension but not release source code or implementable specs or APIs. But that is irrelevant for purposes of complying with this EU law - Google Messages can interoperate with other RCS clients without end to end encryption, which should satisfy the law. Setting aside that extension for a moment, I do know that RCS has more sender verification / anti-fraud messages than SMS, is not inherently run or managed by Google except as one interoperable server deployment among many, is encrypted in transit even without end to end encryption, and is more widely supported than you’d think across carriers and OEMs in many countries. Apple is the biggest holdout.
altairprime 3y ago
iMessage is the only messaging system free of spam, where sending spam gets your device banned from the network. Apple’s use of TPM attestations is mandatory to sign in, and only the gaming console networks for PlayStation/Xbox/Switch have this. It raises the cost of spamming to a hundred dollars per estimated hundred messages (actual threshold may vary), which makes it unprofitable. This makes it highly appealing to users, and since no one else in the mobile market can secure their existing messaging network in this way, government-mandated regulation would create considerable harm to users if the flood of paid-by-spammers and data-scrapers and anticonsumer-trackers clamoring at the gates in Google’s regulatory complaint gain access. Is the cause of openness worth that harm to users? That is ultimately for regulators to decide, and it’s a critically-important decision for everyone that makes money from messaging. (Also, the inevitable STIR/SHAKEN requirement would likely end up requiring processor TPMs, secure attestation, and uniformly deanonymize all traffic on the ‘open’ system, accessible to ‘all’ OS boot+root images signed by corporate-registered signing certificates. I’d rather not see Google accelerate the modifiable computing apocalypse, but here we are.)
- lelandfe 3y ago
  > iMessage is the only messaging system free of spam Just so we’re clear, I receive occasional iMessage spam. I admittedly receive far more SMS spam.
  - altairprime 3y ago
    Yep, device attestation doesn't prevent the "bad actors aren't detectable until they've delivered their first bad message" problem.
- nvarsj 3y ago
  Not sure how you can say this with a straight face. I get spammed all the time on iMessage. Who cares if it is a blue or green bubble, it’s still spam.

sbuk 3y ago

Globally, iMessage is way down the pecking order; the rest of the World uses, in order, WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Snapchat. Google are bitter because it cannot get a decent service to compete despite having 70% of the global market and despite so many different attempts, which is largely down to their institutional ADHD and confused product strategy. Their claim that iMessage is a "core" service under the DMA is laughable and spiteful. If they give a crap, they ought to be going after Meta, which has by far and away the most significant part of the European messaging marketplace.

sjg 3y ago
I believe Google - WhatsApp issue is coming next year thanks to the EU (https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/16deuim/europe_designated_whatsapps_service_as_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/16deuim/europe...) [EU LInk - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_4328 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...] Will be interesting to see what happens although Apple isn't defined as a Gatekeeper in Europe yet, due to market share of iMessage however that may changed based on another investigation later in the year. I wouldn't be surprised if both of these events are relate
olyjohn 3y ago
Google is so fucking dumb. They had the market with Hangouts. Everybody used to be on it. And they fucking burned hangouts users over and over, and now nobody uses it. They blew it, and now they should suck it up and realize they can't compete and are not going to be able to compete for years now because of how they fucked their users multiple times. Nobody is going to want to use a Google product for their messaging for a long time, until their trust is rebuilt. I guess this means their only path is for them to start suing everybody until something opens up for them. What they should do, it just give it up. This kind of shit is not good for anybody. Using the guise of openness, by saying Apple's shit is not open is hypocritical as fuck too.

tinus_hn 3y ago

How about we have a talk about Google chat. I don’t remember Google announcing it would be opened up. Or does their requirement only apply to successful services?

jkaplowitz 3y ago
Yes, these EU rules only apply to services with a European user count above a certain threshold, and therefore not to unsuccessful services. The product currently named Google Chat is Google’s replacement for Google Hangouts for the purpose of Internet-based individual and group asynchronous chat purposes, that’s (badly) attempting to compete with Slack and Microsoft Teams rather than iMessage. Google’s iMessage competitor is already open for interoperability, supporting not only SMS (like iMessage) but also the RCS standard for rich individual and group asynchronous messages, which Apple could add RCS to iMessage but doesn’t want to. So, within the product space in which iMessage is the US market leader (and which WhatsApp leads in Europe), Google already is open and interoperable like the EU would want, but Apple isn’t. In this comment I’m not discussing motivations or making a judgment (beyond agreeing that Google Chat isn’t very successful), just describing facts. Disclosure: I used to work for Google, but not for more than 8.5 years now, and I never worked on or set policy for any of the products I’m discussing in this comment. I’m speaking here only on my own behalf, not on Google’s, nor relying on any Google-internal information for what I’ve said above.
- sbuk 3y ago
  Is the encryption extension open? Who will manage message transport? Can they guarantee the near zero spam iMessage users currently enjoy?
  - jkaplowitz 3y ago
    To the best of my knowledge, Google has published a paper or two about their end to end encryption extension but not release source code or implementable specs or APIs. But that is irrelevant for purposes of complying with this EU law - Google Messages can interoperate with other RCS clients without end to end encryption, which should satisfy the law. Setting aside that extension for a moment, I do know that RCS has more sender verification / anti-fraud messages than SMS, is not inherently run or managed by Google except as one interoperable server deployment among many, is encrypted in transit even without end to end encryption, and is more widely supported than you’d think across carriers and OEMs in many countries. Apple is the biggest holdout.

altairprime 3y ago

iMessage is the only messaging system free of spam, where sending spam gets your device banned from the network. Apple’s use of TPM attestations is mandatory to sign in, and only the gaming console networks for PlayStation/Xbox/Switch have this. It raises the cost of spamming to a hundred dollars per estimated hundred messages (actual threshold may vary), which makes it unprofitable. This makes it highly appealing to users, and since no one else in the mobile market can secure their existing messaging network in this way, government-mandated regulation would create considerable harm to users if the flood of paid-by-spammers and data-scrapers and anticonsumer-trackers clamoring at the gates in Google’s regulatory complaint gain access. Is the cause of openness worth that harm to users? That is ultimately for regulators to decide, and it’s a critically-important decision for everyone that makes money from messaging. (Also, the inevitable STIR/SHAKEN requirement would likely end up requiring processor TPMs, secure attestation, and uniformly deanonymize all traffic on the ‘open’ system, accessible to ‘all’ OS boot+root images signed by corporate-registered signing certificates. I’d rather not see Google accelerate the modifiable computing apocalypse, but here we are.)

lelandfe 3y ago
> iMessage is the only messaging system free of spam Just so we’re clear, I receive occasional iMessage spam. I admittedly receive far more SMS spam.
- altairprime 3y ago
  Yep, device attestation doesn't prevent the "bad actors aren't detectable until they've delivered their first bad message" problem.
nvarsj 3y ago
Not sure how you can say this with a straight face. I get spammed all the time on iMessage. Who cares if it is a blue or green bubble, it’s still spam.