After trailing with some users in a closed group, Google has finally announced the availability of its RCS based Messages to almost everyone around the globe.
The new standard is rolled out on the name “Chat Features” through the Messages app, provided by Jibe Mobile, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Users will be able to chat using their data, send media, etc.
Google’s RCS Messaging Goes Live
Google enters the tight instant messengers’ industry with its Rich Communication Services (RCS) today, as the company has rolled out this new standard for almost everyone around the world. Few exception countries include Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba.
Google has been working with OEMs and network carriers throughout the world to enable this.
It officially announced these, where beta users of Messages can enable this feature in their app. Eligible users will be seeing a prompt to enable this feature or can manually enable it through these steps.
Once activated, users can send text messages and media of all kinds, including contacts, images, videos, GIFs, and files.
Transmission of these will take the Wi-Fi or data instead of your carrier’s plan. Users can also make group chat, check when the recipient has seen the message, etc.
While this places Google’s RCS messaging on par with the regular messengers like WhatsApp, it needs both the users to run on the latest version of the app.
Further, Google had also announced to encrypt these chats for better security. This will be rolling out automatically to one-on-one chats by this month-end and later to group chats next year. The current rollout is more of a beta phase, but for everyone, running till the end of next year.
