Google is a company built on knowing about its users so it can serve targeted ads, but it strives to keep personal communication separate from its advertising arm. Last year, Google added end-to-end encryption to 1-on-1 RCS chats in the Messages app. Just because you're talking to more than one person doesn't mean everyone should be able to listen in, and as announced during the Google I/O keynote, that feature is now coming to group chats.

Most forms of communication are not end-to-end encrypted, which means someone other than the sender and recipient could conceivably intercept and read those messages. With end-to-end encryption, even Google can't see what you're saying. The keynote didn't go into details about this feature, but we can assume it will work similarly to the 1-on-1 version. All parties need to be connected with RCS rather than legacy SMS/MMS services, and of course, they need to be using Google Messages. That's more likely now that Samsung has started shipping Messages as the default messaging app on its latest phones. There are apparently 500 million people using RCS already, a fact Googler Sameer Samat used to needle Apple, saying, "We hope every mobile operating system gets the message and upgrades to RCS."

Chats that have end-to-end enabled include a small lock icon next to the send button; you've probably seen it in the past year. We don't know exactly when that privacy-confirming icon will appear for group chats. All we got is a vague promise to enable encryption in group chats later this year.