What if there was a valid alternative to WhatsApp? Different from all the instant messaging applications that now populate the various App Stores and that so far have never been lucky in their intent to get the better of Zuckerberg and its applications.
It seems that this solution exists, and is “sponsored” by Google which has long been trying to make it a system to be used regularly. It is a protocol called RCS, or Rich Communication Services, open to all telephone operators and mobile phone manufacturers, which would not need an app to install to be used and is described as “ the future of SMS ”.
Like WhatsApp, RCS is a free messaging platform, which can make two or more smartphones communicate with each other without the need to download any application, whatever the brand of the phone. The system itself is good, but Google has failed to take big steps in the right direction to popularize it.
Google tweets its invitation to Apple, what will the answer be?
The Mountain View giant, however, seems to have decided to get help from Apple, and he did so in a rather singular way: he tweeted on his profile an invitation “to the group of people who can help solve this type of problem”, referring right at the colossus of Cupertino.
While the Tweet was obviously jokingly launched, the invitation is serious. Google is a strong supporter of RCS, which it is adopting within Android phones, and its eventual “spread” could jeopardize Apple‘s messaging system. But a possible collaboration between the two companies would certainly benefit both.
RCS is a complete instant messaging system, suitable for managing group communications, encrypting individual chats, supporting voice notes, video calls and audio calls, viewing the online status of contacts, sharing GPS locations, to transfer files and much more. It is actually a very valid alternative to messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat, which are doing everything to become more and more complete.
But RCS in this sense is moving at the right time: at the beginning of the week WhatsApp went down and the fact that most users around the world had a block in messaging services, without big valid alternatives, meant that Google returned to focus on its RCS system. In fact, most users, rather than fall back on Telegram or Signal, or other apps of this kind, preferred to wait for the “down” to end up chatting again.
That’s why Google thinks implementing the RCS system can do what other messaging apps couldn’t achieve earlier this week, and now we’re just waiting to see what Apple will respond to about the invitation received from Mountain View.
