Google's huge Vegas billboard tells Apple to stop dropping the ball

Google has been calling on Apple to adopt the RCS messaging protocol in iMessage for months now, as the service relies on SMS and MMS when users chat with Android owners.

Now, Google has taken over a giant billboard in Las Vegas to urge Apple to adopt RCS, Business Insider reported. Check out the billboard via TikTok user Uptin.

“The ball may have dropped on 2022, but you don’t have to drop the ball on fixing your pixelated photos and videos,” the Google billboard reads. The company even offers “some code to get the ball rolling,” followed by rapidly scrolling lines of code on the billboard itself.

Apple’s decision to fall back to SMS when iPhone users chat with Android users on iMessage means all photos and videos sent by Android users are received at a low resolution. But the data-driven RCS protocol offers high-quality video and photo sharing, read receipts, and several other modern messaging features.

This latest stunt is part of Google’s Get the Message campaign, which calls on people to pressure Apple into adopting RCS. The campaign has also seen Google claim that Apple’s texting is stuck in the 1990s, while it’s also used a Drake song to argue for the new messaging standard.