Why DOJ Cares About Green Bubbles on IPhone
This may seem strange to those who don’t participate in debates, but some people actually care about the color of your chat. You may not have thought about it. You might have an iPhone and notice that people you’re texting sometimes have a green bubble instead of a blue one. However, if you have Android, chances are at least someone in your life has complained about them messaging you .
While some care solely about the aesthetics of their text messages, it’s not really about “green or blue”; rather, it’s about the negative iOS messaging experience that greets green bubble users—that is, anyone with an Android device.
When iPhones send text messages to iPhones, they use iMessage, which offers modern chat features such as typing indicators (which appear as three dots when someone is composing their message), high-quality photos and videos, location sharing, and correct functioning group chats. However, when iPhones send messages to Android, they use SMS, an outdated messaging protocol that has been around since at least 1995 . In addition to the bubble color changing, the quality of your photos and videos degrades dramatically, group chats go berserk, and worst of all, there is no end-to-end encryption, making it less secure.
This is, of course, not the fault of Android users and not the fault of the Android OS itself. As much as I like the Apple ecosystem, this falls squarely on Apple’s shoulders: instead of forcing us to use SMS when sending text messages on Android devices, Apple could have simply adopted RCS, a more modern messaging protocol that includes many of the features , which iPhone users have. expected from iMessage. Android devices using RCS can already access high-quality media, functioning group chats, and end-to-end encryption. Why can’t iPhones? Because Apple doesn’t want it.
Apple could also allow users to change their default messaging app to something like WhatsApp or Telegram, a setting that is currently not available on iOS. Not only will this create competition for iMessage, but Apple will need to allow third-party messaging apps to send and receive carrier messages so that users don’t have to go through the Messages app to receive any message sent directly to their phone number. I don’t feel that strongly about it, but the United States government does.
The Justice Department isn’t happy with all these bubbles.
This is no longer just a consumer issue: As part of a larger lawsuit against Apple, the US Department of Justice is calling the company’s messaging policies anti-competitive behavior. The Justice Department alleges that Apple is deliberately making messaging on third-party devices more difficult to convince customers to buy an iPhone.
Here’s an excerpt from the lawsuit that explains it in a nutshell:
For example, if an iPhone user sends a message to a non-iPhone user in Apple Messages—the default messaging app on the iPhone—then the text appears as a green bubble to the iPhone user and has limited functionality: the conversation is not encrypted, the video is pixelated and grainy , users cannot edit messages or see input indicators. This signals to users that competing smartphones are of lower quality because the quality of messaging with friends and family who don’t have an iPhone is worse, even though it is Apple, not the competing smartphone, that is causing the poorer user experience.
The DOJ not only calls out Apple for deteriorating messaging outside of the Apple ecosystem, but also points out the social stigma that this experience causes among certain demographics, especially younger users:
Many non-iPhone users also face social stigma, isolation, and accusations that they are “disturbing” chats in which other participants have iPhones. This effect is especially strong for certain populations such as teenagers, where one survey puts iPhone adoption at 85 percent. This social pressure increases switching costs and forces users to continue buying iPhones, cementing Apple’s dominance in smartphones not because Apple has made its smartphone better, but because it has made the experience worse with other smartphones.
The DOJ also has citations to back up its assessment, citing a March 2016 email sent to CEO Tim Cook from Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing that said: “Bringing iMessage to Android would hurt us more than will help”. However, a more damning quote—at least in my opinion—came during the 2022 Q&A. Someone questioning Cook said: “It’s hard… not to get too personal, but I can’t send my mom certain videos.” Apple’s CEO responded, “Get your mom an iPhone.” Oh.
Soon everything will change
Even before the DOJ took aim at Apple, change was already in the air. Back in November , the company announced that it would bring RCS to iPhone , finally bridging the gap between the platforms. According to Google, RCS support will launch this fall , possibly as part of iOS 18 .
Once Apple supports RCS, messaging on an Android device won’t be much different from messaging on an iPhone. Of course, you won’t be able to initiate a FaceTime call as easily ( although there is a workaround for FaceTime for an Android user ), but you’ll be able to send high-quality photos and videos, create group chats that don’t suck, and trust that your messages are protected by the same end-to-end encryption , which is what you’d expect from iMessage. (Guys, SMS is extremely unsafe.)
By the time the courts hear this case, the Justice Department’s green bubble arguments may be largely irrelevant—and that’s good for all of us. They’ll still be able to fault Apple for restricting third-party messaging apps on iOS, not to mention the rest of the allegations in the 88-page lawsuit , but they won’t be able to say that Apple is specifically targeting text messaging on Android. a significantly worse and less safe experience. I fully expect Apple to continue to make this as clear as possible when you send a message to someone other than an iPhone user (the green bubbles are probably here to stay), but as long as RCS works as expected, I don’t think it will a huge deal.
My big hope is that these changes will also reduce any stigma associated with being a green bubble user. You’d think that once texting becomes essentially the same, whether you use iMessage or RCS, people might give up on the whole thing. But there are a lot of people who are negative about green bubbles, and they may not change that quickly.
The DOJ may still have arguments on this issue if people don’t change their views once RCS comes on the scene. However, we hope that the rest of us—and those new users just starting to message—won’t care what color our message bubbles are, as long as it just works.