Google announced their new messaging app Allo. This mobile only messaging app has the option to connect to your Google account or with your phone number. Allo gives users the ability to draw on photos, and change font size. It comes with the usual messaging features, cute emojis, and a portfolio of stickers.
Apart from the usual messaging features, Allo features a Google Assistant. Users can set up a conversation with @google and ask it different questions just like how you ask Google on your browser.
If you want to have some fun, you can ask @google to start a game like “guess a movie based on a string of emoji”, pretty neat functions for the lonely and people who don’t have enough friends to have fun with. @google also includes useful “suggestion chips”; this goes into effect when chatting with your friends and you need some immediate response. These “suggestion chips” are powered by a smart machine learning engine from Google.
Security wise, Google is proud that all messages under Allo are encrypted. Apart from that an incognito mode is also available together with private notifications and expiring messages.
Apparently, Google wants to rule the world. So apart from announcing Allo, Google announces Duo, a FaceTime competitor.
Duo is basically a video chatting app. It looks very simple to use, but as per Google, they put a lot of nerdy things inside that we could never comprehend.
Both the Allo and Duo will be available on iOS and Android. It would be interesting to see if Apple users would adopt both applications seeing that they are comfortable using iMessage and FaceTime.
