Back in April Google temporarily put on hold the development of Allo, a messaging app which was only launched in September 2016 as it was pretty much flawed from the word go with limited usage. The company said it had ceased work on the service earlier this year, and now it has announced that it will close down in March of next year.
The shut down of Allo isn’t all that surprising to begin with. In fact, Google is the one to be blamed here as it baked almost all Allo features into its RCS-enabled Messages app like Smart Reply, GIF support and more.
In a blog post detailing its plans for the future of messaging, Google said, “Earlier this year we paused investment in Allo and brought some of its most-loved features like Smart Reply, GIFs and desktop support—into Messages. Given Messages’ continued momentum, we have decided to stop supporting Allo to focus on Messages.”
“Allo will continue to work through March 2019 and until then, you’ll be able to export all of your existing conversation history from the app,” Google said in a blog post. “We’ve learned a lot from Allo, particularly what’s possible when you incorporate machine learning features like the Google Assistant into messaging.”
Google said that it wants “every single Android device to have a great default messaging experience,” but the fact remains that the experience on Android massively lags iOS, where Apple’s iMessage service offers a slick experience with free messages, calling and video between iPhone and iPad users.
Instead of Allo, Google is pushing ahead with RCS (Rich Communication Services), an enhanced SMS standard that could allow iMessage like communication between Android devices. But the main caveat with RCS is that carriers must develop their own messaging apps that work with the protocol and connect to other apps, while the many Android OEMs also need to hop on board with support.
With RCS, Google is giving carriers a chance to take part in the messaging boom, rather than be cut out as WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessage and others take over. But the decision is tricky for carriers, who have traditionally tightly held any form of income until the death. That’s because they won’t directly make money from consumers via RCS, though it allows them to keep their brand and figure out other ways to generate income, such as business-related services.
Another problem is that RCS is not encrypted, which flies in the face of most messaging apps in the market today.
Honestly, RCS makes more sense to me as it will be universal, as long as carriers support it, which means Google may finally have a shot at competing with Apple’s iMessage, albeit a long shot.
Are Hangouts Dead too?
Google is not doing away with Hangouts just yet. However, Google noted that its users will be “upgraded” to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet at some point, which is an obvious indication that the classic Hangouts chat app that was aunched with Google+, is at its breaking point too.
Duo is still going strong!
Google’s video chat service Duo, on the other hand, is surprisingly going strong. It debuted alongside Allo in 2016, and has since expanded to iPad, Android Tablet, Chromebook, and even Smart Displays. In fact, Google has been very active in terms of adding new features to Duo. It recently rolled out the ability to send video messages.
Essentially, Google wants to deliver a simple and unified communication experience for its users. So consumers will have Messages and Duo, whereas G-Suite users can use Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet for team collaborations.
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