Google and a handful of European carriers have written to the European Commission (EC) to urge it to designate iMessage as a 'Gatekeeper,' a move that would force it to open the messaging service up to competing platforms.
The EC is already investigating whether iMessage should be added to a growing list of platforms and services that are designated as so-called 'Gatekeepers,' But Apple argues that it doesn't meet the 45 million monthly-user threshold required for that to be a consideration.
But that so far hasn't stopped the EC from taking a good, long look at iMessage to figure out whether Apple should be required to make it interoperable with other similar platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger — both two platforms that are already on the EC's list of gatekeepers.
Interoperability is the word of the day
This is all in the name of the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, with the Financial Times reporting that Google joined executives from a number of European carriers including Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom in arguing that iMessage should be added to its list.
The DMCA is designed to ensure that no one company or platform can hold a specific user base hostage. In this example, it would be argued that iMessage locks users into iPhones, iPads, and Macs while making the experience worse for those who don't use those devices but need to communicate with people who do.
Right now, any cross-platform communications are done via SMS, the same service that has been around for decades. Google's Android supports the RCS standard, an upgrade on SMS that adds iMessage-like features including reactions and read receipts, but Apple has so far refused to support it. Google has long called on Apple to add RCS support to open a line of communication for Android users.
While there are third-party cross-platform services like the aforementioned WhatsApp and Messenger, they all require their own apps. If Apple was forced to open iMessage up we could expect its messages to appear in the WhatsApp and Messenger apps and vice versa, for example.
If Apple is forced to open iMessage up to other platforms and services, the change may only apply to users in the European Union. However, as Apple has shown with the switch to USB-C, it's possible it may simply go all-in and spin the change as a feature rather than something it's been forced to do in order to keep iMessage available across (almost) an entire continent.
