Google accuses Apple of using peer pressure for profit with iMessages

Google has accused Apple of “bullying its way into smartphone texting” and has said that the company is deliberately creating peer pressure amongst teens to use iMessages instead of Android-based texting.

The issue lies in the fact that Apple’s iMessage turns texts received from Android devices green instead of the blue that’s seen for iOS messages and this has led to iMessages, and thus iPhones, turning into a status symbol for teenagers.

"iMessage should not benefit from bullying. Texting should bring us together, and the solution exists. Let's fix this as one industry," the official Android account tweeted.

The fact that Android users’ messages turn up in green has led teenagers to feel that they might be ostracised if they give up their iPhones, according to the interviews conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

Besides this, Apple’s iMessage also comes with iOS-exclusive features like Memojis that are not available for Android users to use. However, Google Messages on Android does allow Android users to see emoji reactions sent from iMessages. Earlier, if an iPhone user reacted to an Android user’s text with an emoji it would appear as a separate text message.

Google’s head of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer, said that Apple’s iMessage “lock-in” is a “documented strategy”. "Using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing. The standards exist today to fix this," Lockheimer said in a tweet.

While Apple did consider for a while about making iMessage available on Android to bring more users on board, but the idea was dropped since the company decided that it would hurt them more than help them.

"iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove (an) obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones," Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, recently said.

Google has also rolled out a new update that has offered a way for Google Messages to handle the iMessage reactions that are often seen in mixed group chats between users.

"We know that Apple users appreciate having access to innovative features like iCloud syncing across all their Apple devices, Tapback and Memoji, as well as industry-leading privacy and security with end-to-end encryption — all of which make iMessage unique,” Apple told The Wall Street Journal in a statement.

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