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.
iMessage technically isn’t SMS. It just supports it as an additional protocol. On Android, Facebook Messenger
and Signalbehaves similarly (because android lets apps become the default SMS handler).Just FYI Signal no longer supports SMS. They decided it “leads to confusion” and a partially secure app is not good enough. Led me to stop donating to them.