The EU's Digital Market Act prohibits Apple and other tech giants from favoring their own systems.

The long fight to make Apple’s iMessage compatible with all devices has raged with little to show for it. But Google (de facto leader of the charge) and other mobile operators are now leveraging the European Union’s Digital Market Act (DMA), according to the Financial Times. The law, which goes into effect in 2024, requires that “gatekeepers” not favor their own systems or limit third parties from interoperating within them. Gatekeepers are any company that meets specific financial and usage qualifications, including Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple, Samsung and others.

    • bkk_beaucoup@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I don’t want to make assumptions, but your reply makes me think you arrived at Hangouts once it was already being deprecated by Google. Granted, being US based I didn’t need the coverage of WhatsApp (limited as they was even then to phone # accounts), the scant usage of Viber or the other innumerable messaging apps I touched in that time period. Hangouts integrated seamlessly with SMS, let me send media/stickers/map embeds to mixed-platform groups never worrying about quality downgrade. And did I mention that one could access Hangouts (and its SMS pass through server) from any machine in the world through Gmail? iMessage makes you jump hoops to do that shit today.