American multinational technology company Google has now announced that it will finally provide the end-to-end encryption of SMS messages on its apps. The move is seen by many as a bid to compete with other contemporary tech giants like Apple which are already providing these services on their devices.
Although this feature has been opposed by several governments worldwide as they believe that it is a threat to the safety and privacy of the user data, the company has still moved on with its plan to roll out the feature. Justifying the move, Google on its official website said, “No matter who you’re messaging with, the information you share is personal. End-to-end encryption in Messages helps keep your conversations more secure while sending. It ensures that no one can read the content of your messages as they travel between your phone and the phone of the person you’re messaging.”
But it is to be noted that this service will be available for only one-to-one conversations and not for the messages that are sent in the group chat conversations. Google had ensured the availability of Google messages throughout the world last year and now as we know that the Google Messages app is serving as the default SMS service provider on most of the Android mobiles available in the market. This makes this announcement much more important in itself.
By this end-to-end encryption feature, Google will now be able to provide rich communication services (RCS) through carriers on its app. Through this the carriers will be able to provide various tools and features to the users like location status, read receipts and typing status which are available on other social media platforms like WhatsApp. This will be one of a rare instances when any regular SMS service will be providing these entire features. It is to be noted that to avail the service, Google app users will have to use the RCS option by turning it on.
Many experts believe that this move will inspire other brands like Xiaomi to provide the service of end-to-end encryption on their smartphones as well. This will increase the competitive spirit between the major brands across the world.
