Sending a message from Telegram and having it received on WhatsApp will be possible, in theory, starting next month. The EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires that the most used messaging apps be interoperable. WhatsApp and Messenger, both from Meta, are, so they have had to prepare a protocol to adapt to European requirements. In contrast, the European Commission on Tuesday ended the investigation opened last September into Apple over whether its iMessage app should be considered a “gatekeeper service” and forced to connect to third parties. The decision is that the apple application will not have to be opened to others.
Dick Brouwer, director of engineering at WhatsApp, explained some details of the interoperability of his app in an interview with Wired magazine. Messages that come from another app will appear in a separate section at the top of your inbox called “third-party chats.” That separation is necessary because, as he says, software cannot “offer the same level of privacy and security.”
There will be two requirements for interoperability to work. The first is that the app that wants to access WhatsApp notifies it and adopts its encryption protocols to connect to its message exchange infrastructure. It is not yet clear that there are companies that do this. On the other hand, users must also actively choose whether they want to receive messages from other applications.
The European Commission has, however, exonerated Apple from allowing iMessage to be interoperable with third parties as Google claimed, in a dispute over the different color with which the ‘ticks’ of Android (green) and iOS (blue) messages appear. on the iPhone, a kind of stigma to avoid in young groups in the United States.
The DMA applies to companies that offer basic platform services (search engines, messaging apps, social networks) and with a minimum market capitalization of 75 billion euros or an annual turnover of 7.5 billion euros, which are referred to in the law as gatekeepers. They must also have at least 45 million monthly users in the EU and more than 10,000 annual users. The conditions basically point to three companies: Apple, Google and Meta (Facebook).
The European Commission has also excluded several Microsoft services from gatekeeper consideration, such as the Bing search engine, the Edge internet browser and its online advertising service. Brussels noted that it “will continue to monitor market developments with respect to these services, in case substantial changes occur.”
Apple and Microsoft will continue to be considered gatekeepers “with respect to their other core platform services.” In March, for example, Apple will open the iPhone to alternative app stores to its App Store. The change will come with the iOS 17.4 update.