Google is not going to stop working on the messaging platforms. Hangouts was worked on for long, several things changed but it didn’t really pick up, Project Fi is another example, and now at Google I/O event, the new messaging app Allo is announced.
The title “Chat Smarter with Allo” means a lot – it does also mean that Hangouts is too plain a messaging tool right now. One of the ways Allo is going to be smart is by having the Google Assistant built right into the app! And Allo is not going to replace Hangouts. This is a fresh start and it will stay separate, and it will rather compete with the current market leaders in messenger apps, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
If you had used Inbox by Google, you know how Smart Reply works. It gets into your conversation history and would suggest you something that you can respond with. Allo will have a similar way of suggestion, based on your previous conversations with the contact.
It is a complex structure built to understand how people would chat and respond to particular messages. To learn more about how the Google developers went on to build it, check out the Research blog.
Just like WhatsApp, Allo will need your phone number for the signup, and then you can choose whether to add your Google account to it, though it is not mandatory. There is the usual stuff of messaging, stickers, emojis, and then, the big Google Assistant helping you out.
While you are chatting with a person, you can always interact with Google at the same time to get suggestions, answers to your questions, and as a perfect example, you wanted to go out for a dinner with your friend – right from the chat screen, you can ask Google Assistant to book a table for you at a certain restaurant through OpenTable.
Then comes the encryption part – though Google gives the users an option to have the chat end-to-end encrypted, if that happens, all the good things will be probably gone. If you want proper interaction and take advantage of Google Assistant, you might have to keep the chat open without the end-to-end encryption, otherwise, you will be using just another basic chat app. There is also an Incognito mode, but if all this is too private, Google fears that the smart features won’t be coming to use there.
These smart features will be part of the Android and iOS apps for Allo that will be available later this summer. Google also announced Google Home, Android Instant Apps, the new Android Wear 2.0, and Duo – the video chat platform.
