Did Google finally get it right?
“Allo” is much more than just another messaging app
If you’re like me, your initial reaction when hearing about Google’s new messaging application was probably not one of uncontainable excitement. After the likes of Google Wave and Google Plus, most of us have learned to manage expectations anytime the search giant wanders into the realm of social media or mobile messaging. Is there any reason we should feel differently about Allo?
Released on Wednesday to unsurprisingly little fanfare, Allo is a clear signal that Google actually does know how to leverage its core competencies to create powerful, potentially disruptive software. Unlike iMessage, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, Allo succeeds in making artificial intelligence a practical and intuitive feature of messaging.
Alongside you and your friends in each conversation is the full power of Google Assistant. By calling @Google at any time, the search engine’s version of Siri can transform your chat into a collaborative drawing-board, making it easy to share information or make plans. Meeting a friend tonight for drinks near Union Square? Ask @Google to list all the bars in that area and their respective ratings.
Another convenient advantage of Google Allo is the app’s Smart Reply feature. As you may have guessed, Smart Reply reads your chats and suggests meaningful responses that it derives from your previous interactions. Allo can even recognize the content of photos that you receive and quickly generate a list of possible replies. This represents a major step up from the generic auto-replies of other services.
Of course, Allo also ships with most of the standard“goodies” you would expect from any messaging platform, including voice integration, location sharing, photo doodling and a generous package of unique emoji.
So what?
To be fair, the technology behind the most powerful features of Google Allo is not one of a kind. Facebook Messenger already boasts over 11,000 chat bots and appears to be much more focused on generating revenue from the service. Apple, on the other hand, recently launched the latest version of iMessage, which now employs its own collection of downloadable apps that users can incorporate in their conversations.
As always, the truth is in the details: Artificial intelligence of this sort is only truly desirable when it is convenient. Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Now and Siri have always been capable of the same functions that Allo offers. The problem is that, in addition to requiring users to “prime” them before being used, they also force the user to speak — something that represents an inconvenience for many text-happy smartphone users.
With Google Allo, users don’t have to sift through thousands of bots, change screens or download any extra applications — the power of deep learning is integrated directly into the natural flow of user behavior. This is the AI sweet spot.
Not so fast
Even with its sleek design and innovative features, Google will face an uphill battle in getting users to adopt its prized new app. For starters, the messaging market is already extremely segmented, with most users showing very little willingness to switch platforms. For many people, the network effects of services like WhatsApp or iMessage are so valuable that they are a convenience in and of themselves — why download an entirely new app just to talk to that one friend (me) that has Google Allo?
Google should be more than familiar with this dilemma. The firm used its massive base of over a billion Gmail users to promote Google Plus, essentially making participation in the social network mandatory … and it still flopped. Gchat didn’t turn out much better, despite being lobbed into Gmail and coming standard on millions of Android smartphones.
On top of this, Allo lacks some important features that could be a deal breaker for some people. One biggie is cross-device accessibility. Whereas Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and iMessage can be used on both smartphones and PCs, Allo is only available for IOS and Android.
Google was also supposed to add end-to-end encryption to the service but ultimately limited the privacy feature to messages sent in “incognito mode,” a move which prompted Edward Snowden to denounce the app.
Despite these limitations, the future could still be bright for Allo. Sure — the competitors have billions of loyal users, but Google has a few tricks of its own. First, the company is likely to make the app a standard feature of the Android operating system, giving it almost instant presence on millions of devices. Any increased usage will serve as critical training data for the app, making it even more valuable for new and existing users.
Second, Google has access to information about users that Facebook and Apple could only dream of, like years of e-mails and search queries. It remains to be seen if these data are actually used by Google Assistant, but they remain an option either way.
The future is uncertain
But it doesn’t really matter — the thinking behind Google Allo shows that the firm is still capable of innovative ideas that take advantage of its existing resources. In the age of distraction, a little bit of focus can go a long way.
