Google Messages finally acts on RCS ads spamming in India

Since last year, Indian users were constantly complaining about the sheer amount of Ads being pushed through Rich Communication Service (RCS). Now after being reported by several news organisations, Google has decided to suspend the Business Messaging feature in the country. 

The RCS Ads which were more like constant spamming were being sent from ‘Verified’ businesses. Most of the ads are for loans, banking, insurance, gambling, shopping from companies like Airtel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Flipkart, Bajaj Finance, RummyCircle and more.

Google said that it is aware of companies in India misusing Business Messaging features to push advertisements and promotional messages to users. To prevent further inconvenience, the company is now disabling Business Messaging so that companies can no longer send ads. 

“We are aware that some businesses are abusing our anti-spam policies to send promotional messages to users in India,” said a Google spokesperson. He added, “We are disabling this feature in India while we work with the industry to improve the experience for users.”

Android Police was among the first to report this issue about a year ago. There were also constant posts on social media from users frustrated with these promotional messages. However, Google didn’t respond or act on these complaints until they widely came into news with several platforms publishing stories about it last month. 

If you're wondering just how bad the ads in Google Messages can get, I got all these in just the last 7 hours. Amazing.

No normal consumer should have to face this on a basic & necessary phone app.@lockheimer, is this what RCS & Chat features are meant to be? https://t.co/a2i7H6xRYW pic.twitter.com/KqxFATDwwG

— Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) May 17, 2022

RCS is a handy feature that allows users to send do way more than general text messages. With RCS enabled, you can send videos, audio, high-resolution images and also get features like read receipts and real-time viewing. 

Indian companies misused the Businesses Messaging feature to barrage users with multiple promotional messages daily. Reporting them as spam or blocking didn’t make any difference and Ads will keep coming from a different ID. This ultimately forced users to deactivate Rich Messaging altogether. 

Now, with the Business Messaging feature disabled, users will hopefully be able to use RCS without ads and unwanted promotional messages, as it was supposed to be. Google has stopped Business Messaging as a temporary solution while it works on a solution for the ads.