Multimessenger Beeper, which Apple was desperately fighting, has been acquired by Automattic (WordPress and Tumblr)

Have you not forgotten Beeper yet? That messenger that iMessage launched on Android and upset Apple so much? Well, it was acquired by Automattic, which owns WordPress, Tumblr, Simplenote, and other services.

This deal is part of Automattic's strategy to make online messengers a key part of its business. The official deal amount is not disclosed, but Bloomberg, citing an informed source, writes that Automattic will pay $125 million for Beeper. Under the deal, Automattic will fully absorb the Beeper developer — a team of 27 employees will join the new owner's staff. Among them is Eric Migicovsky, co-founder of Beeper and Pebble. He will lead Automattic's messenger business. In his official blog, Eric Migicovsky stated that the app "will maintain its independence within the Other Bets division". Although the deal was made after a public dispute with Apple, Automattic has long been an investor in Beeper.

As for Beeper, it is an application that combines various messaging services in one interface. A universal messenger to manage all other messengers. The first beta version of Beeper was released in 2021. The service operates on the Matrix distributed database protocol. In April, it came out of beta, which involved 115,000 users (with another 466,000 in the queue).

There is no more waitlist, Beeper is completely free and available to everyone on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. It currently supports 14 messengers and social networks, including Telegram, Signal, Instagram, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord. Later, a premium subscription with additional features is expected to be introduced.

iMessage on Android in the context of the Google and Apple standoff over RCS

There are a few more important points to mention. Firstly, before Beeper in October 2023, Automattic acquired another messenger aggregator — Texts. It also operates on the Matrix protocol. In the future, the Texts and Beeper teams will merge under the Beeper brand, and for now, everything remains unchanged for users of both services.

Secondly, the feud with Apple over Beeper Mini, which allowed Android users to send iMessage to iPhone users. Recall that in late March, the US Justice Department sued Apple over the "smartphone market monopoly", mentioning the Beeper incident, among others. Therefore, it is quite likely that eventually Apple will achieve official iMessage support on Android.

While Apple is not rushing to bring iMessage to Android, later this year (fall), it will implement the RCS messaging protocol. In 2008, the GSMA developed a new standard data exchange protocol that is expected to replace SMS/MMS. RCS allows subscribers to communicate through a universal messaging service with the same features as messengers, a protocol actively promoted by Google for the past 5 years. This will greatly simplify message and file exchange between iPhone and Android.