Sorry Senator, nobody is stopping anyone from using alternative messaging apps such as Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger (which apparently had just been rebuilt using Signal’s end to end secure messaging protocol), Telegram, Snapchat, or any other cross platform ones that are available on both the App Store and Google Play. Shutting out Beeper from iMessage isn’t anti-competitive.
It may be inconvenient that many Americans are on iMessage while their Android friends and colleagues are being shown as unsecured green bubbles but the rest of the world don’t have this problem because they use other messaging apps.
There is no antitrust problem here. Just because people refuse to use clearly available alternatives doesn’t make it an antitrust problem.
If the Senator thinks iOS and Android users should be able to communicate securely without having to download other apps, maybe the Senator should consider finding out why the RCS protocol is not inherently secure? Google only recently made RCS secure on Android and it’s had a complicated past.
Will the Senator admonish Microsoft for not allowing Google Docs users to collaborate directly on Office docs and vice versa, or am I giving her a terrible idea?
AuliaSays 