Google disables RCS ads in India due to flood of spam from businesses
reports of rampant spam by some firms, Google has banned businesses from using RCS for promotion in India, the company's largest market by userbase
RCS, which stands for Rich Communication Services, is the product of a partnership between a number of companies to augment classic SMS with modern features such as richer messages and end-to-end encryption
In recent years, Google, Samsung, and a number of other companies, including telecom operators, have rolled out RCS support to hundreds of millions of users around the world.
Last month, Google announced that RCS messaging in the Android Messages app had surpassed 500 million monthly active users.
The company urged "every mobile operating system" (a subtle dig at Apple) to support RCS, which is also aimed at helping businesses reach out to users in a more interactive way.
The problem, however, is that a number of Indian businesses, including top banks and other lending institutions
have been abusing the feature to send unsolicited promotional materials to any phone number they can find across the country, as reported by TechCrunch.
Earlier, a number of users took to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction, and it appears that their messages have reached Google.
"Some businesses are abusing our anti-spam policies to send promotional messages to users in India," Google said in a statement
As a result, Google has disabled the feature while it "works with the industry to improve the user experience for users."