Google is hoping regulators will bail it out of the messaging mess it has created for itself after years of dysfunctional product reboots. The Financial Times reports that Google and a few cell carriers are asking the EU to designate Apple’s iMessage as a “core” service that would require it to be interoperable under the new “Digital Markets Act.” The EU’s Digital Markets Act targets Big Tech “gatekeepers” with various interoperability, fairness, and privacy demands, and while iMessage didn’t make the initial cut of services announced in September, Apple’s messenger is under a “market investigation” to determine if it should qualify.
[…]The criteria for gatekeeper services all revolve around business usage. The services the EU wants to include would have more than 45 million monthly active EU users and more than 10,000 yearly active business in the EU, a business turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros, or a market cap of 75 billion euros, with the caveat that these are just guidelines and the EU is open to arguments in both directions. When the initial list was announced back in September, the EU said that iMessage actually met the thresholds for regulation, but it was left off the list while it listens to Apple’s arguments that it should not qualify.
The sooner the various messaging services are forced to interoperate – preferably via completely open specifications anyone can build for – the better. These services should not be locking users in.
So what about a non-profit like Signal? Can they still reach the revenue threshold if donations etc are high enough? Although that seems very unlikely. Are these requirements OR (one is enough) or AND? Because if the former, then just having 45 million EU users could force Signal to participate.
j0scher,
You do bring up an interesting question. But doesn’t signal already provide an open protocol that others can interoperate with? Also, assuming other platforms were forced to open, Open source projects might welcome the opportunity to interoperate without any legal coercion. Some already try to bridge across networks, it’s typically the dominant proprietary service providers themselves who are blocking integration.
There are a lot of technical questions about how specifically this would work, but at the same time there is precedence for multi-protocol clients.
What I find interesting is that iMessage was originally in scope as a gatekeeper. Then the EU removed it.
Its been a source of annoyance to me as an Android user that iMessage is walled off, but then it seems like over the last 3-4 years (in Europe at least) people have settled on WhatsApp for interoperability. Is that so widespread that iMessage is now a niche in Europe?
If the US ever copied the EU gatekeeper rule (unlikely!) then iMessage would be much more likely to be in scope for the US market.
Waaaa, Google crying because Android sucks and only old people and nerds use it and no one wants green bubbles.
Google worried about iMessage when they got 80% of search and ads on the internet, talk about needing regulation.