It's that time of year again, folks. As the tech world has sights set on the latest Apple event that is producing the new iPhone 16 as we speak, we all know we'll be seeing slightly improved phones, some impressive specs, and a few 'innovative" or "magic" new features from Apple. For me, however, the...
Isn’t RCS fully controlled by Google now, with encryption only if the messages first go through Google’s servers so they can scrape their sweet sweet advertising keywords?
It doesn’t really matter what server you use for encryption. The key exchange still happens through Google’s servers if you use Google’s app, but there’s nothing for them to scrape there. RCS is a federated network of carrier services so any server can carry your encrypted messages, though you’ll only be able to use a few servers in practice (your carrier’s server and Google’s, as Google opened theirs up to just about anyone). Also, messages are end-to-end encrypted by default so there’s nothing for Google to scrape.
The RCS spec is maintained by the GSMA, specifically this working group within it. That’s a collective of over 1200 companies. Google is probably part of GSMA, but so is everyone else who does anything with mobile networking.