Google has slammed Apple for using its iMessage function as a tool to allow teenagers to peer pressure and bully each other into using iPhones.
This comes after a Wall Street Journal expose that showed that Apple deliberately kept iMessage exclusive to its own smartphones, after learning that using it represented a status symbol for impressionable teenagers.
Emails highlighting this were revealed during the ongoing Epic Games v Apple case.
“In the absence of a strategy to become the primary messaging service for [the] bulk of cell phone users, I am concerned the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s chief software executive, wrote in a 2013 email.
In 2016, marketing chief Phil Schiller emailed Chief Executive Tim Cook with a similar argument. “Moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us.”
Google has since hit out against the strategy.
“iMessage should not benefit from bullying,” Android’s official Twitter account posted. “Texting should bring us together, and the solution exists. Let’s fix this as one industry.”
Hiroshi Lockheimer, a Senior Vice President at Google also took aim, writing: “Apple’s iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy. Using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing. The standards exist today to fix this.”
