Mark Zuckerberg trashes Apple’s IMessage for green and blue bubbles

• Zuckerberg is trying to put WhatsApp above Apple’s iMessage in terms of interoperability and privacy.
• He said the Facebook-owned app is actually “far more private and secure” than Apple’s.
• Apple’s recent privacy changes have proved to be a major blow to Facebook’s ad-based business.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg slammed Apple’s iMessage on Monday, criticizing the lack of interoperability between iPhone and Android devices.

He posted a photo of a billboard ad from Facebook that jokes about iMessage limitations that cause Android messages to appear in green bubbles, while iPhone texts appear in blue bubbles.

“WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works on both iPhone and Android, including group chats,” Zuckerberg wrote on Monday on Instagram.

Some users have long complained about the poor cross-device messaging experience, as well as low-quality compressed videos, lack of read receipts, difficulty with group text, and emojis not sending properly.

Google threw Apple at the topic earlier this year, dedicating a rare spot under its web search bar. Google said Apple converts texts sent between iPhone and Android into SMS and MMS, which are decades-old methods of sending text-only messages from device to device. Google wants Apple to use its RCS system instead. Apple CEO Tim Cook has resisted making iMessage more interoperable with Android phones due to technical difficulties help sell more iPhones.

Zuckerberg also had another motive for criticizing iMessage. Facebook, which changed its corporate name to Meta last year, recently launched a major marketing campaign for WhatsApp, promoting the platform’s security aspects and privacy features.

Alongside a photo of the WhatsApp billboard campaign in New York, Zuckerberg added that the platform allows users to set conversations to “disappear at the touch of a button” and that “end-to-end encrypted backups” have been available since last year. “Everything iMessage still doesn’t have,” he wrote.

Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion, and the company has recently been turning to the platform as a potential source of revenue while other parts of the company have stalled. That’s the business, which consists almost entirely of digital advertising, he took over a $10 billion hit due to the privacy changes Apple implemented last year. In updating its iOS, Apple urged its more than 1.6 billion device users to do so give up that applications track them. Such tracking is how companies like Facebook have built reliable user targeting for advertisers and become one of the biggest companies in the world.

This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has tried to come after Apple’s business since he rolled out his privacy changes. During last week’s Facebook Connect developer conference, Zuckerberg and other executives mentioned several times their hope and belief that his Oculus headset and development of the metaverse it might replace a laptop one day. “Ultimately, we think your Oculus will be the only workspace you really need,” said CTO Andrew Bosworth during the event.

Zuckerberg previously cited Apple as a competitor, which prompted Cook last year say no think of Facebook the same way. “If I can ask who our biggest competitors are, they wouldn’t be listed. We don’t deal with social networks.”

An obvious dislike between the two executives going back at least until 2014, when Cook first publicly criticized Facebook’s business model. During the interview, Cook questioned companies that make money by “collecting a ton of personal data,” and of those that do, he said, “I think you have a right to be concerned.”

Are you a Facebook/Meta employee or someone with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at [email protected], in the secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or via Twitter DM at @hayskala. Contact using a non-work device.