Google is great at so many things, but one thing that eludes them is having a proper chatting app. Hangouts is not that popular, they killed off Google Buzz years ago and now Allo might be following suit.
According to a report by The Verge, Google is ‘suspending’ the development of Allo, their chat focused app which they launched a few years back.
“The product as a whole has not achieved the level of traction we’d hoped for. […] We set out to build this thing, that it [would be] a product that we would get hundreds of millions of people to get excited about and use. And where we are, we’re not feeling like we’re on that trajectory,” Google’s VP for Communications and Photos, Anil Sabharwal gave a statement to the publication.
From the statement, it sounds like not enough people downloaded and used Allo to the level Google wanted. Anil was quoted as saying that the team was giving themselves time to think what the next step is, which could mean it is highly likely it might be phased out. However if you are a current Allo user, the app will continue to function and they will support it ‘to some capacity.’
Allo was announced with a lot of pomp and colour back in May 2016 alongside Duo (their video chatting app). One of its cool features was the fact it was one of the few places to interact with Google Assistant, which has since grown to become a key feature on Android and on first & third party hardware.
Since Allo is now on its deathbed, Google is now focusing on Chat as the Verge reports, which is based on Rich Communication Services. It is not a new app per se but it is a new standard meant to ‘replace’ SMS. Your texts, photos and videos will be sent like SMS and it looks like this is Google’s reboot to sort out this mess of having failed chatting apps and compete with iMessage.
