The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Technical decision · 2007–2010
Google got emoji into Unicode as plain characters, so they worked on every phone
In 2007 Google proposed encoding emoji as ordinary Unicode characters even if monochrome; Unicode 6.0 made them universal in 2010.
Google · Unicode Consortium · Apple · Japanese mobile carriers
the move
Emoji began on Japanese cell phones, where each carrier had its own set of a few hundred symbols. They were transmitted as plain text, but a symbol on one network was meaningless on another.
Unicode had a principle against encoding rich-text attributes such as color and animation, so the obvious route — treating emoji as images — ran into the standards wall.
why it works
- Encoding emoji as characters made them data, so any phone could at least decode them, whereas carrier-specific sets could not interoperate.
- Google needed to search the web and find text containing emoji, which required them to be real characters, not pictures.
- The carriers were willing to put new additions in rich text to keep the existing set stable, which unblocked the standard.
what transfers
When a format is trapped by platform-specific decorations, shrink it to its lowest common denominator; plain characters travel, rich pictures do not.
what came after
Emoji were added to Unicode 6.0 in 2010, then expanded across planes and into color fonts from Apple, Microsoft and others. Emoji became a truly universal, interoperable form of writing, with the Unicode standard controlling which characters exist worldwide.
references
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