Google’s iMessage competitor RCS bags 100 crore users

Google Messages has achieved a significant milestone of 1 billion monthly active users for its RCS (Rich Communication Services) platform. To celebrate this achievement, the tech giant is rolling out seven new features for its Messages app, aiming to enhance user interactions and allow personalities to “shine through.”

“Today marks a new milestone that we are incredibly proud of: There are now more than one billion monthly active users with RCS enabled in Google Messages. We are grateful to our partners and our users that have advocated for RCS over the years — it’s been a lot of work to get here, and we want to thank you. Beyond Google Messages, there are other messaging clients that use RCS and we are pleased that Apple also took their first step two weeks ago in announcing that they’re embracing RCS,” Google announced in a blog.

RCS, positioned as the successor to SMS and MMS and a big competition to Apple’s iMessage, introduces modern features such as typing indicators, read receipts, threaded replies, high-quality media sharing, improved group chats, and enhanced privacy. Google’s persistent efforts in promoting RCS seem to have paid off, with the platform gaining widespread adoption including Apple that announced the RCS adoption few weeks ago.

The new features introduced include:

Photomoji: Users can now turn photos into expressive reactions using on-device Google AI. These creations are saved for reuse, and friends in group chats can also utilise them.

Voice Moods: Voice Moods” adds emotional expressions to voice messaging. Users can choose from nine different emotions, and when sending a voice message, the recipient not only hears the words but also experiences a corresponding visual effect that represents the sender’s mood. Additionally, based on user feedback, the overall audio quality of voice messages has also been enhanced by increasing the bitrate and sampling rate.

Screen Effects: Vibrant animations take over the entire screen for specific messages, such as “it’s snowing” or “I love you.” Google encourages users to discover over 15 hidden effects.

Custom Bubbles: Users gain the ability to personalise bubble colour and background for individual conversations, offering a level of customisation beyond blue or green.

Reaction Effects: Adding more life to conversations, this feature animates reactions over messages for the ten most popular emojis.

Animated Emoji: Specific emojis trigger visual effects, similar to features found in other messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

Profiles: Google Messages now supports user profiles, allowing individuals to personalise their profile name and picture. This feature is designed to address the issue of receiving messages from unknown numbers in group chats.

These features will initially be available in the beta version of Messages, and not all at once. Google mentions that “many” of these features will be accessible in the beta channel, but specifics are not provided.