WhatsApp, the number one messaging app and the de facto standard in communications around the world, is testing interoperability with other services required by the European Union, all to encourage free competition in an area largely dominated by US tech giants. And it is not the only service in such a dilemma – the alternative is to end its operation in the common market.

There is no doubt about WhatsApp as it is the benchmark in the messaging segment. The question now is what other services should do the same. The answer, at least for Google, is resounding: Apple iMessage cannot be deleted, no matter how much those from Cupertino resist, something they have been doing for years. The Internet giant thus took advantage of the fact that the European Commission is investigating whether iMessage should be subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and therefore to the interoperability rules.

It’s not the first time Google has pushed back in this regard, nor is it the first time Apple has resisted, though it looks like it’ll be the one that’s going to have the hardest time making a comeback. Essentially, Apple is taking the same stance it claimed last year, arguing that iMessage, with just 45 million users across the board, isn’t a big enough service to fall under DMA regulation.

Google is thus returning to the fray and, according to the Financial Times, it is doing so together with the main telephone operators in Europe, incl Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone; union in favor of interoperability, they claim, with which they are putting pressure on the European Commission to make iMessage essentially follow the same rules as the rest of the competition. They highlight something that would “benefit European consumers and companies” as a whole.

“It is essential that companies can reach all their customers using modern communication services with rich messaging features,” reads the letter that the association would send to the Commission. “Through iMessage, business users can only send rich messages to iOS users and must rely on traditional SMS for all other end users,” the letter continues, as confirmed by various sources.

Now it remains to know the position of the Commission, whose term expires next February. In the meantime, of course, the pressure will continue to increase, and no one is giving a single stitch here: while it is true that Apple’s excuses do not hold up and that, as usual, they are only looking out for their own interest, Google has bet on the industry to adopt RCS, an open standard proposal with all the technological advancements that can be required from the current messaging protocol.

However, Apple’s position is well known for its exclusion: even then they admitted that bringing iMessage to Android would hurt them, and Google’s push to adopt RCS was categorically rejected, in fact at the level of mockery: “Buy a mother iPhone,” Tim Cook replied to those who they asked him to push for interoperability in core messaging apps.