Google says RCS in Google Messages now has over 1B MAUs, and adds Photomoji, Voice Moods, Screen Effects, Custom Bubbles, Animated Emoji, and other features
First, the number: according to Google, over 1 billion monthly active users are using RCS in Google Messages.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google’s RCS rollout in the US began in 2019, turning Google Messages into the company’s primary vehicle for deploying the newer messaging standard across Android users. By 2022, Google said the service had passed 500 million monthly active users while publicly pressing other mobile platforms to adopt RCS.
The move past one billion monthly users gives Google a substantially larger installed base for differentiating Messages with expressive features, rather than treating RCS solely as a transport upgrade.
First-order effects
- Google Messages users on RCS gain new ways to personalize and animate conversations, including Photomoji, Voice Moods, Screen Effects, Custom Bubbles, and Animated Emoji.
- Google can now position these additions against a reported base of more than one billion monthly active RCS users, reinforcing Messages as a major Android engagement surface.
Second-order effects
- The larger RCS audience raises the value of feature parity and interoperability for handset makers and mobile platforms that participate in the standard, since users will increasingly encounter richer messaging behavior as a default expectation.
- Google’s continuing investment shifts competitive attention from simply enabling RCS to the quality and pace of messaging-client features layered on top of it.
Third-order effects
- If adoption and feature investment continue together, RCS is likely to become less of a carrier-led protocol transition and more of an application-layer product surface shaped by major platform messaging clients.
- That would make control of the default messaging experience—its feature roadmap, identity, and future service integrations—a more consequential point of competition in mobile ecosystems.
The trend: Google is turning RCS from a standards-upgrade campaign into a scaled, feature-rich messaging platform centered on Google Messages.