Google makes workarounds to use rcs via Messages impossible

Google is going to make the ‘rcs workaround’ in its Messages app impossible. That seems to be happening on the side of the Google servers, because the company says that the work-around will no longer work on old, current and future versions.

Google states in the Messages Help Forum and to Android Police that the disablement of the workaround is underway and that by the end of February, Google’s implementation of rcs in Messages will no longer be usable unless the user is in an officially supported market. Those are the US, UK, Mexico, Germany and France. At the moment, Google has nothing new to report about expansions to other countries.

Rcs is intended as the successor to SMS and is being developed by the GSM Association in collaboration with Google. Not only does rcs allow you to send messages, but it also has all kinds of techniques that are the norm for chat apps, such as sending photos, videos and read receipts.

Because rcs works at the network level, the cooperation of telcom providers is also necessary for the implementation. Google said last year that it no longer wanted to wait for telcos and therefore introduced rcs itself, in which the messages are sent from the network via Google servers due to lack of support. The feature is an opt-in.