Most fashionable shopper messaging platforms (together with Google Messages) help end-to-end encryption, however customers at the moment are restricted to speaking with contacts who use the identical platform. For this reason Google is strongly supportive of regulatory efforts that require interoperability for big end-to-end messaging platforms.
For interoperability to achieve apply, nevertheless, rules have to be mixed with open, industry-vetted, requirements, significantly within the space of privateness, safety, and end-to-end encryption. With out strong standardization, the outcome might be a spaghetti of advert hoc middleware that would decrease safety requirements to cater for the bottom frequent denominator and lift implementation prices, significantly for smaller suppliers. Lack of standardization would additionally make superior options similar to end-to-end encrypted group messaging not possible in apply – group messages must be encrypted and delivered a number of instances to cater for each totally different protocol.
With the current publication of the IETF’s Message Layer Safety (MLS) specification RFC 9420, messaging customers can sit up for this actuality. For the primary time, MLS permits sensible interoperability throughout providers and platforms, scaling to teams of hundreds of multi-device customers. It is usually versatile sufficient to permit suppliers to deal with rising threats to consumer privateness and safety, similar to quantum computing.
By guaranteeing a uniformly excessive safety and privateness bar that customers can belief, MLS will unleash an enormous subject of latest alternatives for the customers and builders of interoperable messaging providers that undertake it. For this reason we intend to construct MLS into Google Messages and help its large deployment throughout the {industry} by open sourcing our implementation within the Android codebase.
