Google Messages is my weapon of choice for SMS messages and friends who don’t have other options. The simple fact is, not everyone is on Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal or Messenger. Particularly friends on iOS often don’t have anything other than iMessage available to them.

While Google Messages has supported end-to-end encryption for single users, if you’re in a group chat, it’s not as secure. For a while, this has been the case but it seems that Google is working on solving that issue.

I’m on the Beta for Google Messages and, at the time of publishing, the feature isn’t yet turned on. These types of features are often server-side switches, so can be turned on and off easily, whether by region or simply a staged rollout for users. Keep in mind for the encryption to work, all members of the group chat will need to be on RCS.

Unfortunately, other platforms were far too well established when Google finally delivered a decent option for messaging. So there aren’t a lot of users out there who use RCS as a default messaging option.

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