Google starts rolling out end-to-end encryption to group chats in Messages

Google today announced that it has started rolling out end-to-end encryption for group chats in Messages. The company said that it will make this feature available to some users in the open beta program over the coming weeks.

It is worth noting that individual chats in Google Messages already support end-to-end encryption. And earlier this year at its annual developers’ conference, I/O 2022, Google had announced that it will bring a similar functionality to group chats in its Messages app. At the time, the company had also said that it will make this feature available to all its users towards the end of this year. Now, months later, Google has finally detailed when this feature will be available to use.

“RCS enables end-to-end encryption, while SMS does not. This means that all one-on-one texts sent using Messages by Google, for example, are encrypted, so they’re private and safe and can only be seen by the sender and the recipient,” Google wrote in a blog post announcing the functionality.

“And now, end-to-end encryption is starting to roll out for group chats and will be available to some users in the open beta program over the coming weeks,” the company added.

In addition to this, Google also announced that soon, Google Messages users will be able to react to RCS messages with any emoji. Simply put, the company making RCS messages less boring and more conversational.

Additionally, the tech giant took this opportunity to take a shot at Apple, the company that has refrained from adopting RCS — a format that Google has been promoting aggressively — in its own messaging app called iMessages. To recall, Apple CEO Tim Cook famously said, “Buy your mom an iPhone”, when a user complained about the issues that lack of interoperability between iMessages on his iPhone and Messages on his mother’s Android phone was causing.

In its blog post announcing the development, Google said that while all major mobile carriers have adopted RCS, Apple “is stuck in the 1990s”.

“And today, all of the major mobile carriers and manufacturers have adopted RCS as the standard — except for Apple. Apple refuses to adopt RCS and continues to rely on SMS when people with iPhones message people with Android phones, which means their texting is stuck in the 1990s,” the company said.

The post Google starts rolling out end-to-end encryption to group chats in Messages appeared first on BGR India.

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