[room500]

I don't understand how opening iMessage would sell existing iMessage data to anyone?

Today, if an iPhone user sends a message to an Android user, that message is sent via SMS. If Google wanted, it could already scrape the message. What would change if the protocol was open and the message was sent to the Android device using iMessage?

There is no expectation for Apple to give Google read/write access to the iMessage database (not that it exists, but still). What is the downside of users being able to interoperate and use the protocol?