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I like my iPhone. I currently use an iPhone 17 Pro Max, and it’s great. It has great cameras, a great display, and it has more than enough power inside for any of the things I want to do, which usually means some combination of taking photos, responding to email and Slack, and looking up random medical questions on ChatGPT.
Of course, I can do all of those things on really any smartphone. The reason I love the iPhone has very little to do with the camera or the chip. Like millions of iPhone users, it’s the fact that things “just work,” especially when it comes to my other Mac, Apple Watch, and iPad.
Maybe the best example of this is AirDrop. When you think about it, the fact that you can just beam photos or files from one device to another is the result of an extraordinarily complex set of technologies. For the user, however, it’s incredibly simple. It just works.
AirDrop is one of those features you don’t think about until you use a device that doesn’t have it. Then you realize how much friction it quietly removes from your life. It’s not fancy, but it’s pure Apple: invisible until the exact moment you need it, and then absolutely effortless.
That’s why what Google’s announcement this week is so surprising. For the first time, the Pixel 10 can send files directly to an iPhone using Apple’s own AirDrop system. It isn’t some convoluted workaround or some cloud-based link. It’s basically AirDrop, but between Android and Apple. And Google did it without Apple’s help at all.
AirDrop is Apple at its best
The magic of AirDrop isn’t that it exists. Dozens of file-sharing protocols exist. The magic is that it works everywhere, instantly, and without any setup. Take a photo, tap share, choose a device, and it just appears. No accounts. No pairing. No QR codes. No asking whether the other person has the same app. No converting file formats. No compression.
That level of simplicity is extremely difficult to engineer, and even harder to replicate across different hardware and software. It’s also one of Apple’s purest “it just works” moments—something the company does better than almost anyone else.
And because Apple controls the hardware, software, radios, and protocols, AirDrop has always been strictly an Apple-to-Apple feature. That exclusivity turned AirDrop into one of Apple’s most interesting lock-in advantages. In fact, I think you can argue that AirDrop is far more powerful, in practice, than people give it credit for. If you’ve ever tried to send a video from an Android phone to a Mac user over text message, you understand.
Which is why what Google pulled off here is a big deal.
How Google made this work
On paper, what Google did looks almost impossible. AirDrop isn’t documented publicly. The protocol isn’t designed to accept devices that aren’t signed and trusted within Apple’s ecosystem. And, Google says that Apple wasn’t involved in making this happen, but they figured it out anyway. It’s now possible to send Pixel-to-iPhone transfers that behave almost exactly the way AirDrop normally does.
The short version is that Google effectively built its own compatible implementation of the underlying AirDrop discovery and transfer behavior. It uses the same kinds of signals—Bluetooth LE for discovery, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi for the actual transfer—and wraps it in a security-hardened layer that Apple devices are willing to talk to.
Google rewrote major portions of the logic in Rust, submitted it to independent security testing, and ensured that everything happens entirely on-device. There is no cloud service or servers involved, and Google isn’t collecting any data. It’s just one device sending bits directly to another.
There is one catch: to receive files from a Pixel, an iPhone must temporarily be set to “Everyone for 10 Minutes,” Apple’s AirDrop visibility mode that loosens the usual “contacts only” restrictions. It’s not quite as seamless as Apple-to-Apple sharing, but it’s surprisingly close and—assuming Apple doesn’t make a change to nuke this capability, it’s a win for everyone.
Of course, because Apple didn’t formally approve this, the company could break it at any time through a protocol change. And historically, Apple hasn’t been shy about doing exactly that when it believes a feature threatens security, privacy, or its overall user experience.
This is good for everyone–including Apple
Here, however, the risk is different. If Apple shuts this down, it won’t look like it’s protecting users. It will look like it’s protecting its walled garden and taking away a capability that genuinely makes using an iPhone better.
The reality is, people who use iPhones don’t only know other people who use iPhones. I talked to a couple recently where the wife uses an iPhone and the husband has a Pixel. This is the kind of thing that will make sharing photos of their children infinitely better, as one example.
AirDrop is great because it’s useful and removes friction. And frictionless experiences are more valuable when they work for everyone, not just for the people who bought a specific piece of hardware.
Apple already knows this. It’s why Messages is adopting RCS. It’s why Apple brought Apple TV to smart TVs. It’s why Apple Music ships on Android. Even Apple—the world’s most successful walled garden—understands there are moments when expanding the garden is better than adding more walls.
This is also smart for Google in that it positions the Pixel 10 as the Android phone to get if you want to reduce friction with the iPhone users in your life. That’s a powerful competitive advantage that shouldn’t go overlooked.
Make the experience better for everyone
There’s a broader takeaway here that applies far beyond smartphones:
AirDrop is the kind of feature people love because it solves a real problem in the simplest of ways. People want things that reduce friction to exist everywhere. If you won’t provide that interoperability yourself, someone eventually will—whether it’s a competitor, a regulator, or an enterprising engineer on a deadline.
Google didn’t beat Apple by creating a replacement for AirDrop. It beat Apple, at least temporarily, by making AirDrop more useful. That should get Apple’s attention—not because it undermines the iPhone, but because it reinforces what made the iPhone successful in the first place.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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Jason Aten
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