Google Allo is a brand new free messaging app. New free messaging app doesn't excite us anymore. We already have too many of those, isn't it? In India, WhatsApp is all a rage. So much so that it has become popular enough to become a tool of political parties for manipulating public opinion! At such a time, it is natural to wonder how a new messaging app would compete.
Well, it is too hard yet to say whether Google Allo will survive or go the way of Google's several other previous products like Google Wave. Google Wave was a brilliant messaging service and collaboration tool. But sadly, it never picked up.
Recently, Google has launched two new communication apps. These are Google Duo which is highly simple yet specialized video chatting app. The second of these new apps is Google Allo. It is a free messaging app with the Google Assistant built in.
Google also has Hangouts Dialer which integrates with Google Hangouts and allows free calls to most phone numbers in US and Canada. Calls to other countries can be made at a discounted rate. And using Google Hangouts, we can make free voice and video calls to all Hangout contacts, besides messaging.
It is too hard to understand why Google chose to release different apps for free voice calls, free video calls and free messaging instead of combining them in one. Google could have just updated Hangouts. As far as I can guess, Google is planning to target enterprise customers with Hangouts. And it probably wants to to give users the ease of simpler apps. Now users have the freedom to use the app of their preferred means of communication. For example, if an elderly lady just wishes to video chat with her faraway grand kids, she has no need of finding her way through other additional features in a multi-use app.
Anyway, this post is about Google Allo, so let us check out how Allo compares against WhatsApp or Hangouts.
Google Allo vs. WhatsApp and Hangouts.
- Free messages with media: Like other free messaging apps, Allo can be used to send free messages. These messages can include photos, audios and videos.
- Annotate photos: You can write or doodle on a photo before sending it. No stickers can be added on photos yet.
- Smart Messaging: Unlike other messaging app, Allo has artificial intelligence. So it tries to predict what you might like to type in response to a message. For example, if someone asks you 'How are you?' It will show you options like 'I'm good,' 'fine,' etc. This doesn't always work perfectly, but can save your time while answering common queries. You just need to tap on the suggestion and it gets posted.
- Incognito chats: As yet, there's no end-to-end encryption of general chats in Allo. But it does allow incognito chats. These secret chats are protected by encryption, expiring chats and private notifications. Users can even set the duration within which the chats are to expire and vanish.
- Camera integration: Google Allo has camera integration so it can be used to click a photo or shoot a video and share them instantly.
- Emoticons & Stickers: It has many emoticons and cool stickers. As I have been told by the Google Assistant within it, "Engineers are working on more stickers." So although the sticker sets are not too many for now, they are going to increase soon. There is no animated sticker or emoji. The Emoticons have their button near the message input field. Rest of the features like camera, stickers, location have to be accessed by pressing the Plus button on the left of the chat field.
- Send Locations: Users can send their current location by just tapping at the location button and hitting send. This sends the map of the area with your current location pinned on it.
- Groups: Like WhatsApp, Allo can be used to form groups too.
- Mute chats: Like WhatsApp, Google Allo also allows individual or group chats to be muted.
- Media download: It also allows user to turn off the auto-download of media.
- Chat history: Google Allo has easy options for the user to clear chat history and delete activity. I didn't see any option to backup and restore chats though. So if you reset your phone or lose it, you can't retrieve your chat history.
- Only on smartphones: Free messaging apps like WhatsApp and Hangouts can be used on smartphone as well as computers. Allo as yet is only available for Android and iOS smartphones.
- No free audio/video calls: WhatsApp, Hangouts and even Facebook Messenger have free calling feature. No such feature in Google Allo yet. You can use it to send audio or video messages, but there are no audio or video calls on it.
- Interface: I found the user interface of Google Allo to be cleaner and more pleasing when compared to WhatsApp, Hangouts or Facebook Messenger.
- Tied to phone number: Like WhatsApp and unlike Google Hangouts, Allo is tied with your phone number.
- Free SMS: It allows you to send SMS for free to any of your contact who is not using Allo. But along with that message, a request is sent for the receiver to download the Allo app. Even Allo group chats can be sent to non-users through free SMS.
- Contacts: All the Allo chats show up in its homescreen. If you want to start a new chat, just click the new chat button at the bottom. This loads up the contact list which shows all the contacts in your phone contacts list. As yet, the contact list doesn't differentiate Allo users. To find out which of your friends are on Allo, start an incognito chat. The contact list for that will only show Allo users.
- Google Assistant: Free messaging is just one part of Allo. It's major highlight and major difference from other free messaging apps is its Google Assistant. Google Assistant in Allo can keep you entertained by playing games, sharing jokes, poems and also work as a helper by quickly finding map directions, checking mails, setting alarms and timers and in many other ways.
- Google Assistant in all chats: The Assistant has its own chat window. It can also be called into any chat by just typing @Google. This way, you can use its various features within any chat. It is very fast and obeys voice commands too.
It is very hard to predict yet how Google Allo will succeed against the already well established competitors. It is still a work in progress. Even the artificial intelligence of its Google Assistant is still in its 'Preview Edition.' But it is a very nice looking free messaging app in itself. I like its clean and pleasant user interface. However, for me, it is not a free messaging app with a Google Assistant. For me, it is Google Assistant with free messaging app. And I'm loving it!
If you want to know more about Google Allo or download it, here are the links:Check out my post about what Google Assistant in Allo can do (You'll find the links given below in that post too)
https://allo.google.com/ https://googleblog.blogspot.in/2016/09/google-allo-smarter-messaging-app.html Download links: For Android