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Allo is a messaging app that leverages the power of Google

By Ng Chong Seng - 21 Sep 2016

Allo is a messaging app that leverages the power of Google

 

Hello, Allo

One of two apps announced at Google I/O in May - the other being the Duo video-calling app - Google Allo is a new messaging app from the search giant and Android maker.

For a start, know that Allo is a mobile-only app, which is to say it’s not designed to replace Hangouts, Google’s other messaging app that’s available on desktop OSes through web browsers and Chrome extensions. In fact, Allo is a highly focused app that deals with messaging only, unlike the 3-year-old, IM and video chat-capable Hangouts, which was convinced back in the days when cramming features into a single app was a trend.

As such, the Allo interface is very straightforward and easy to understand from the get go. Like most modern chat apps, it uses a phone number-based system. Yes, you can still sign in with your Google account, but that’s not compulsory. (I do recommend it though if you use Google’s services; for one, that will allow the Google Assistant to use your search history when it’s making suggestions. I already had Hangouts installed on my iPhone, so this happened automatically.) Allo will also ask for permissions to send you notifications, as well as access to your contacts, camera, photo gallery, and location data - pretty par for the course for IM apps these days.

And get this, your contacts don't really need to install Allo to see your messages. iPhone users will be able to see and reply to them using traditional SMSes, and there will be a link to help them get the app; Android users will see them in notifications (along with an app download link) and be able to reply through Android's own notification system.

 

Stickers, Whisper Shout...and more stickers!

If you’ve used messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, or Line, you’ll instinctively know how to navigate about in Allo. And like most of these aforementioned apps (and the new iMessage in iOS 10), emojis and stickers are a thing in Allo, too. Three custom sticker packs come pre-installed, but there are 26 (!) more from various artists available for download in the “Sticker Marketplace”.

But the fun doesn’t end there: taking a photo and sending it right in the chat, and shrinking or enlarging a word to better convey a tone by dragging your finger up or down the Send icon (Google calls it “Whisper Shout”) are a couple of additional ways to make your mostly text-based chats more lively. On Android, you can also doodle on a photo before sending it.

 

Hi, Google Assistant

But Allo isn’t just a messaging app - it’s a smart messaging app. And one of the built-in smarts is Smart Reply, which lets you respond to chats without any typing. Not unlike the Google Inbox email app that has a feature of the same name, Smart Reply essentially analyzes your messages (including images) and tries to suggest contextual reply options, like “Sure”, “Either works”, or even “Yummy”. And because it uses machine learning, suggestions will improve over time as it learns more about your style.

And then there’s Google Assistant, arguably the single most important feature Google has put into Allo. Well, we all know what Google is great at, and Google Assistant is basically there in Allo to help you find information. Need to find out when’s Manchester United’s next match, just enter into a 1-on-1 chat with Google Assistant. And it’s not just search results, Allo can pull information (like your schedule for the day) from other Google services you use, as well as from Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Translate. In a way, Allo is a souped-up Google Now that can now banter back and forth (in natural language) with you. If you think this sounds awfully similar to chatbots that companies like Microsoft and Facebook are doing, you’re not wrong. Thing is, Allo is plugged into Google’s search engine, which itself plugs into Google’s almost-all-knowing Knowledge Graph. Here’s another example how Google Assistant tried to anticipate my next move: When I asked for VivoCity’s opening hours, it not only gave me the answer, but also suggestion buttons like “About VivoCity”, “Call”, and “Directions”.

(And oh, did I mention that Google Assistant can also be a participant (just type "@google") when you’re chatting with other real human beings? Because it’s kind of sad to talk all day with a virtual assistant. And trust me, it helps to have a dining authority with all the answers in a lunch time chat involving a group of indecisive humans.)

 

Going incognito

Regarding privacy, like Chrome, there’s an Incognito mode in Allo, which when enabled will encrypt your chats end to end, using Open Whisper Systems’ Signal Protocol. And in Incognito mode, lockscreen notifications and in-app chat previews won’t spill out chat contents. You’ll know you’re in Incognito mode when you see the hat-and-glasses icon overlaying the main chat icon and a dark gray UI when you’re in the chat. There’s a stopwatch icon you can tap too, which brings up a menu where you can set the chat expiration time (from 5 seconds to a week to never). Google Assistant won't work in this mode, since it has no chat logs to work on.

If there’s anything else I can add at this point, it's that while Google has made the right choice to use the Signal Protocol, this end-to-end encryption isn’t enabled by default (only to and from Google’s servers). And Google is unlikely to enable E2E encryption out of the box, because that will seriously cripple Google Assistant, which in my opinion is the main draw of Allo. Maybe Google can separate chats from the cool, bot-related features so that E2E encryption can be turned on all the time for the former, but let’s be real, if E2E encrypted chat is really (and only) what you’re looking for, there’s no need to even consider Allo in the first place.

Also, I appreciate that Google has intentionally kept Allo simple. However, I'd like to see a desktop client someday, simply because I hate to reach for my phone at work, especially when I'm already busy pounding on my notebook's keyboard.

The TL;DR version: Google Allo can be a very, very useful messaging app, as long as you don't show Google Assistant the door. And I already like it more than Hangouts.

Google Allo is available for free starting today on both iOS and Android.

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