Google confirms that Messages for Android will get end-to-end encryption for RCS group chats, rolling out “later this year” in open beta
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google :
Context & Ripple Effects
This confirmation closes a loop Google opened in late 2020, when it completed a global rollout of RCS and promised to start testing end-to-end encryption in Android Messages. The 2021 feature drop delivered the first half — end-to-end encryption for one-to-one RCS chats — leaving group chats as the visible gap.
Group encryption is also the harder half: it requires key management across every participant rather than a pair, which is why the path ran through an internal build leak in 2020, then an open beta, before Google eventually shipped group encryption and turned RCS on by default.
First-order effects
- Messages users in the open beta get encrypted RCS group threads, closing the gap left when Google encrypted only one-to-one chats in 2021.
- Carriers stay out of the encryption path — keys live in the clients — so the rollout proceeds without new carrier infrastructure, though carrier terms still gate who gets RCS at all.
Second-order effects
- Apple's iMessage loses its 'only encrypted texting option on phones' distinction for mixed groups, sharpening the green-bubble interoperability argument that RCS adoption feeds.
- Other RCS implementers are pressured to match Google's client-side encryption or concede that their messaging stacks are the insecure tier of the standard.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — beta, then default-on, as happened when Google turned RCS on by default — encryption stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes for any carrier-grade messaging service.
- Carrier-controlled SMS/RCS gradually splits into two tiers: legacy unencrypted fallback traffic and an encrypted overlay owned by whoever ships the client, shifting power from carriers toward platform vendors.
The trend: Default-on encryption is migrating from opt-in betas into carrier messaging itself, with Google setting the pace for the RCS ecosystem.