After Google, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is targeting the green and blue bubbles of Apple’s iMessage

• Zuckerberg is trying to put WhatsApp ahead of 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 proved to be a major blow to Facebook’s ad-based business.

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

He posted a photo of a Facebook billboard ad that jokes about iMessage restrictions causing Android messages to appear in green bubbles while iPhone text appears in blue bubbles.

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

Some users have long complained about this poor cross-device messaging experience, along with poor-quality compressed videos, missing read receipts, difficulties with group texts, and emojis not sending properly.

Google slammed Apple on the matter earlier this year, reserving a rare spot under its online search bar. According to Google, Apple converts texts sent between iPhones and Androids to SMS and MMS, which are decades-old methods of sending plain text 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 because the technical difficulties are helping sell more iPhones.

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

Alongside the photo of the WhatsApp poster campaign in New York, Zuckerberg added that the platform allows users to set chats to “disappear with one touch” and that “end-to-end encrypted backups” have been available since last year . “iMessage doesn’t have any of that yet,” he wrote.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014, and the company has recently turned to the platform as a potential source of revenue growth as other growth areas of the company have faltered. Its business, which consists almost entirely of digital advertising, has suffered a $10 billion loss due to privacy changes introduced by Apple last year. In an update to its iOS, Apple urged its more than 1.6 billion device users to opt out of being tracked by apps. Through such tracking, companies like Facebook built reliable user targeting for advertisers and became one of the largest companies in the world.

It’s not the first time Zuckerberg has tried to come for Apple’s deal since it enacted its privacy changes. During Facebook’s Connect developer conference last week, Zuckerberg and other executives repeatedly expressed their hope and belief that the Oculus headsets and Metaverse developments could one day replace the laptop. “Ultimately, we think your Oculus will be the only workspace you really need,” said CTO Andrew Bosworth during the event.

Zuckerberg has previously named Apple as a competitor, prompting Cook to say last year that he doesn’t view Facebook in the same way. “If I may ask who our main competitors are, they would not be listed. We’re not in the social networking business.”

An apparent dislike between the two executives dates back at least to 2014, when Cook first publicly criticized Facebook’s business model. During an interview, Cook surveyed companies that make money “by collecting tons of personal data,” saying for those who do, “I think you have a right to be concerned.”

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