Apple’s iOS 18 will bring exciting new features to its billion plus iPhone users, including RCS. But Google’s latest warning—and the serious issue behind it—might just stop some of that excitement and serve as a much needed reality check…
Reports ahead of iOS 18, due in the fall, are dominated by expectations of an exciting AI upgrade. But the other key change is on the messaging front, with Apple having finally relented to pressure from Google and others to allow RCS onto iPhone.
While RCS is undoubtedly a huge step up from the 1990s SMS platform currently in use to message between Android and iPhone, it has its drawbacks. There will almost certainly be no end-to-end encryption between Google Messages and iMessage, and Apple users will risk the avalanche of uncontrollable spam RCS will likely bring.
Now Google has upped its efforts to address this problem before iOS 18 goes live. The risk, of course, is that this removes some of the gloss Google used to entice Apple over to RCS in the first place—maybe a case of be careful what you wish for.
While sending media and showing typing indicators is fun for users, RCS advertising is perhaps the biggest change, with the value of this fairly new segment surging. Billed as bringing “unprecedented levels of customer targeting and 100% viewability to brands,” RCS could become the biggest advertising medium in the world, with the type of captive audience and the lack of filters now on email.
Ahead of Apple bringing another billion-plus sets of eyeballs to RCS, Piunikaweb has just reported on changes it looks like Google is making “to secure the platform in as many ways it can before RCS goes live to millions of iPhone users, which invariably will result in even more spam links.”
Google already warns Messages users clicking links from unknown senders—but benignly, to try to stem the tide of smishing attacks. But now it looks like it is going further, forcing users to actually click to accept the risk before opening a link.
As ENEA reported earlier this year, “4.8% of global messaging traffic is fraudulent… this is now so pervasive in the messaging ecosystem that between 19.8 billion and 35.7 billion fraudulent messages were sent in 2023… with brands incurring costs of $1.16 billion due to fraudulent messages.”
Hard truths for the RCS market if it’s to avoid a consumer backlash—the last thing businesses want is RCS being switched off by irritated users. The prize is a $2 billion market, with “businesses are increasingly adopting RCS for its ability to engage customers effectively, as research suggests that RCS messages are read 35 times more often than emails, and engagement with brands using RCS is 74% higher.”
No-one wants to see the golden goose killed at this early stage, and so this is a superb wake-up call for Android users and should be very welcome by all—except the spam factories churning out the billions of unwanted messages, of course.
As Android Police comments, “the confirmation step aims to control RCS spam, which is important before Apple expands RCS support to the iPhone.” This is not Google’s first step on the RCS front to make Android more like Apple, its decision to bar some rooted devices from RCS had a similar purpose.
There will need to be more levels of defense put in place to filter out spam if Apple and Google really intend to join over-the-tops such as WhatsApp as a genuine cross-platform messaging solution. Apple has a good track record of applying innovation to privacy and security, and that will be much needed here.