Google Blocks RCS Promotional Messages in India Over Spam Abuse
Google disables RCS promotional messaging for businesses in India after numerous firms, including major banks, flood users with unsolicited ads. The tech giant pauses the feature to work with the industry on improving the user experience.
Google disables businesses from sending promotional RCS messages in India, its largest market by users, after widespread abuse of the system. Numerous firms, including top banks and lenders, exploit the Rich Communication Services standard to flood individuals with unsolicited advertisements. This aggressive spamming severely frustrates users who receive multiple unwanted ads every day through the default Google Messages app.
RCS represents a major industry effort to modernize traditional SMS by adding rich media, interactive elements, and end-to-end encryption. Google leads this charge and recently celebrated over 500 million monthly active users on its Android Messages app. The company heavily promotes RCS as the future of mobile messaging and actively pushes other operating systems to adopt the standard.
Despite these grand ambitions, the spam crisis in India forces Google to hit the brakes on RCS business promotions in the region. The company acknowledges that many senders violate anti-spam policies and takes immediate action by disabling the feature. Google currently works with industry partners to develop better safeguards before re-enabling promotional RCS capabilities.