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Google has announced plans to roll out end-to-end encryption in its Messages app for Android. The news comes following the completion of the global rollout of its RCS-based chat features after the company decided last year to roll out access to the service itself, rather than waiting for operators telecoms activate it.
Rich Communication Services (RCS) brings the old SMS standard into the instant chat era, offering higher quality group chats, emojis, and photo and video sharing. It also provides status, input and online reading indicators. The slow global availability of the standard has led most people to switch to services like WhatsApp and Messenger. Last year Google announced that it would start offering its own RCS servers, starting with the UK and France, bypassing operators that showed no sign of activation. After launches in several other countries, this process is now complete and chat functionality through Google is now available worldwide. The result is a service that is closer to iMessage on Apple devices, and with more possibilities to integrate with other messaging standards.
As part of this announcement, Google confirmed that Messages will soon support end-to-end encryption (E2E) – one of the most attractive features in other chat packages – starting with one-on-one conversations. head using RCS in Google Messages. Google confirms that this means that “no one, including Google and third parties” will at any time be able to see what either party has said. Even if the message is intercepted by hackers, it will be unreadable. Google will begin rolling out E2E for beta testers starting this month and early 2021. When it becomes available, all conversations that meet the criteria will automatically upgrade to E2E. By eligible we mean that both parties will need to use Messages, with chat features enabled.
Although used by thousands of businesses for two-factor authentication, the SMS standard is now almost 30 years old and increasingly dangerous. We hope that the arrival of RCS and E2E will bring text messaging back to life for another 30 years. Google Chat, due to replace Hangouts next year, also works with RCS, which could signal that one day Google will actually have a cohesive messaging strategy and bring everything together.
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