Google Allo - A Smart Messaging App That Helps You Say More and Do More

With Allo, Google is taking baby steps into a world, where they have crashed and burned many times before. A few years ago Google thoroughly dominated messaging market. When people left IMs they did that on Google Talk. In 2012, But when challenges by the new service called WhatsApp – instead of improving Google Talk, it suddenly killed it and replaces it with hangouts app. The Hangout App was a disaster.

Allo is Google attempt to get back into the game, the problem is that these are fragmented markets dominated by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage. Like Apple iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and nearly every other Messaging App, Allo

• Has a clean design, easy to use interface and setup process that is familiar to everyone who has installed WhatsApp.
• Unlike Hangouts, Allo doesn’t require a Google account. Although if your phone already has it, it automatically adds that. But to work it needs your phone number, similar to how WhatsApp requires it.
• Once you have provided the number and installed the app, it scans the phone address book and automatically identifies your contacts right away. This is standard operating procedure on almost all the apps.

The greatest trick that Allo has up its sleeve is the machine learning feature that WhatsApp does not have. As we first saw in Google Inbox Platform, Allo has similar smart reply capabilities. When you receive a message asking if you want to go for a movie, Allo will give you pre-defined reply options. Ready for you to tap and send. Allo will learn over time how you typically respond to a question and begin offering reply options that fit your personality, for example if you say “K” instead of “OK”. Allo will learn that. Also Allo leverages Google Photos’ ability to identify what’s in a photo to provide smart reply option.

Allo will bring Chromes Incognito feature to Chat. When activated, it will allow the use of end-to-end encryption to secure message between the participants. Notifications for incognito conversations will lack any identifying information, such as message preview and the senders name. Once you close out a conversation, the chat history vanished.

While Google has many features that will make replying to text, quite simpler with advanced intelligent suggestion, there is no multiple device support(Yet). There is no Web Client(Yet). I hope that these features would be added in the near future, as this is the very first release.

With all its features, Allo with certainly kill google own messaging service called “Hangout”. But I Still feel it would be difficult for the current applications to pull people from WhatsApp as that is the first messaging service, there are lots of data that people have in the WhatsApp and wouldn’t bother to leave the service. Further, the social networking has gone saturated, with socializing limited to facebook and messaging limited to WhatsApp, the current User might not be interested in migrating their profiles.

I also feel unlike there is huge opportunity to engage developer network with the messaging Services, None of the top players provide API for integration with Third Party Apps. Allo might want to change that in the future.