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.
My impression is that SMS has always been an american thing. Still not sure why it’s still going considering how many free, more secure chatting apps exist. I don’t like Whatsapp either but hey, at least it’s nos SMS.
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).