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There’s a new iMessage for Android app — and it actually works (www.theverge.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Yep notifications require google play services installed.

No they don't. But that's not what we're talking about anyway.

They do not require a google account or being signed in to one.

The app does.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

If you use on android apps from the playstore, most apps are built to relay their notifications through Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), so they don't have to have a background notification listeners running 24/7. It also means less overhead from multiple notification listeners from every app having its own. So yes, if an app is built on top of google play services, it requires "google play services"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase_Cloud_Messaging

If an app says it doesn't rely on google play services, it uses an alternative notification listener or websockets, which might not be as effective, because Google is inbuilt and won't kill its own apps, the scale of its infrastructure, and its habit of listening on people's activity.

Add in Androids habit of killing background services, and you don't always get your notification when the app isn't in the foreground.

Even Signal from Playstore uses Google Play Services for notifications.

https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/g217a6/what_can_google_glean_from_signal_using_fcmgcm/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

There is also an alternative push protocol called UnifiedPush, but not many of the popular privacy focused messengers care to implement it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yes I'm aware of all of that, thanks

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Well, Google firebase notifications do. Either Google play or something comparable like MicroG. It's possible to run them another way too but not many app backends support that.

But yes my complaint is exactly that this app requires google.