Google has been doing a ton to make RCS, or Rich Communication Services, the usual messaging protocol throughout all cellular platforms. It labored with all of the U.S. carriers, together with AT&T and Verizon, to make Messages by Google the default app, the place RCS is supported. It’s pruned its listing of extraneous messaging apps and consolidated to solely probably the most important ones. And it’s now cryptically trolling Apple into taking part in good.

Yesterday, the corporate’s SVP of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer, known as out to Apple not directly in a cheeky tweet. It all began when Golf Digest reported on pro-golfer Bryson DeChambeau’s tough time as the only inexperienced bubble in a gaggle chat. One of DeChambeau’s teammates known as it a “pain in the butt” that he’s the one participant on the U.S. Ryder Cup crew with out an iPhone.

Lockheimer tweeted in solidarity. “Group chats don’t need to break this way,” he wrote, including that there’s a “Really Clear Solution” to DeChambeau’s problem along with his teammates—clearly an acrostic referring to RCS. Lockheimer ended the tweet inviting anybody “who can make this right” to name on Google for assist in including compatibility.

Google’s been engaged on migrating its Android userbase over to RCS for years. However, it’s been a barely complicated course of as carriers dipped out and in of supporting the usual earlier than finally selecting it. The SMS-based protocol is a feature-rich model of the usual textual content message that’s been round for over a decade. Many U.S. Android customers ought to have entry to its options now, together with learn receipts, typing standing, and placement sharing—supplied you’re speaking with a appropriate Android gadget. RCS additionally permits end-to-end encryption—one thing iPhone customers have quietly loved in iMessage for some time now.

Apple isn’t in supporting RCS, nevertheless, as a result of it doesn’t should. The firm’s proprietary iMessage protocol has labored fantastic for its customers inside its well-groomed walled backyard. It’s why the time period “green bubble” has develop into a typical pejorative to confer with the one Android buddy within the iMessage group chat.

Google will doubtless proceed to try to lure one among its largest opponents overtly into becoming a member of its messaging occasion, as Apple is the final holdout to transform to RCS. At current, one of many largest punchlines in opposition to the search large is that it’s already botched its messaging rollout, first by complicated everybody with a mass of messaging apps after which by ready too lengthy to maneuver over to RCS.

At the very least, Android customers lastly have a unified messaging platform they’ll collectively rely on to interoperate with each other. But the one approach we’re prone to see some parity between Android Messages and Apple’s iMessage is thru third-party hijinks like Beeper, which purport to funnel messages by the suitable servers to assist bridge the huge platform hole.