Google Allo May Launch This Week

Megalith

Megalith

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According to a prolific leaker, Google’s attempt at yet another messaging app is releasing this week. Duo, the company’s video app, was released over a month ago, so it’s about time that counterpart Allo reared its head. I just hope it doesn’t crash as much as Hangouts does for me.

Google Duo and Allo, the company's latest messaging applications, were announced back at Google I/O this year. Only Duo has been released to the public, and as I'm sure you all know, Google has been silent about the release date for Allo apart from a summer release. With the first day of fall coming on September 22, time is running out to meet the deadline. Evan Blass, more famously known as @evleaks on Twitter, posted a tweet saying only "Hello, Allo (launches this week)." That's it. No other details, or a more specific release date. Rumors from other sources suggest September 21, but we are taking them with a grain of salt.
 
All they really need to do is bring back gchat. It worked infinitely better than "hangouts" ever has.
 
Such a joke...

Hangouts which was released installed on a number if phones also isn't used by anyone I know.

People won't even know WTF allo and duo are...

SMS and MMS still remain the standard it seems, except for iPhone to iPhone which is iMessage... I wish Google could get this stuff working more like iMessage, so we don't have to rely on SMS and MMS with their inherent limitations...
 
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I dont even understand google. All they do lately is make an app for every single idea and hope that it gets popular enough without putting any real effort and polish in. They are literally making every user the tester and mining their data at the same time. This is why I stopped supporting anything google, they just dont give a shit about 99% of their projects, and either drop it immediately after, or update it once or twice and forget it exist.
 
Dear google,

Please stop. Google voice was great till you pushed us to hangouts. Now you don't even have hangouts working correctly, you come up with another shitty messaging app? Just stop and fix what's broken.
 
I don't mind Hangouts, except how it horribly compresses MMS photos. None of Google's messy IM apps can touch iMessage. It the one area Google has completely screwed the pooch in the mobile space. Creating yet another app that does the same thing doesn't seem like the best approach either.
 
I've never bothered to use Hangouts. My recent phones have been trying to push it on my, but I still just use the "Messaging" app for text messages, and whatever app whomever I am trying to contact happens to be on at any given time for everything else.

I don't understand the desire for a single unified app. Doesn't make a difference to me. As I stated in a different thread for my Brazilian fiance and her family, I use WhatsApp. For everyone else I use SMS in the Messaging app for more immediate needs. People usually have their phone handy, and just about everyone has unlimited messaging these days anyway.

If it's not something I'm hoping for a same-day response to, I just go with email.

The way I see it:

Need immediate response? (I'm here, where are you, type stuff) I'll either call or send a text. For medium term, stuff where I don't care if I get a response in a few hours it's SMS or WhatsApp depending on who I'm contacting. For everything else I just send an email.

I didn't mind Google voice. I used it to forward SMS and voice calls from my old number when I got a new one. I was rather annoyed when I moved to Google Fi though, and voice and FI don't play nice, so I can't have my calls forwarded from my old number anymore.

When you think about it, its pretty amusing. Google Voice can forward calls to pretty much any carrier, but not to Google's own service...
 
Canon said:
What is broken is that no one I know uses it because it isnt the default on all Android phones and obviously iOS users just use iMessage because it's the default pre-installed option...

It sounds stupid but that seems to be how things work around here. I like experimenting with different things but the same cant be said for others and with a chat client, it's kind of a two way street...
Click to expand...


I've only used Hangouts on a handful of occasions. I determined I liked the old SMS messaging app better.

I only ever used it to send SMS messages. I guess my question is why does anyone need anything more than SMS?

It made sense to offload it over the network in the past - I guess - when many people paid per text message, but today, why is any other messaging app than just plain old SMS even needed?

That's really the only thing I use other than Whatsapp, which I only use to contact the crazy Brazilians in my life, and they only use it because SMS is terrible in Brazil. (Strange cost structures depending on who sends, who receives and on what network)

Also, they call SMS:es "torpedoes" which is pretty amusing.

So anyway, yes, except for my Brazilian contacts, all I ever really do is torpedo everyone. And I don't see why anyone would need anything else. Plain old text messages just work. No need to complicate life with other clients, even iMessage.

Everyone has SMS, and it just works. No need for anything else, ever.
 
Canon said:
What is broken is that no one I know uses it because it isnt the default on all Android phones and obviously iOS users just use iMessage because it's the default pre-installed option...

It sounds stupid but that seems to be how things work around here. I like experimenting with different things but the same cant be said for others and with a chat client, it's kind of a two way street...
Click to expand...


The funny thing is I disabled Hangouts on my phone for the very reason so.e of you seem to like it. I don't want my text messages mixed up in anything else. I want an SMS only app, which is what I have in messenger.

I don't need a messaging over the internet app. This is not the 90's. AIM/ICQ isn't cool anymore :p
 
My main issue with SMS is the character limit and for MMS it compresses the crap out if pictures you send.
 
Canon said:
My main issue with SMS is the character limit and for MMS it compresses the crap out if pictures you send.
Click to expand...

Doesnt every single SMS app out there these days split long messages and then stitch them back together on the other side so that it is transparent?

I don't recall running into a character limit in SMS in many many years.

As far as pictures go, messaging pictures are really just ibtebded for low quality "hey look at this" type pictures. It doesn't need to be able to handle high res high quality images.
 
I guess to me I want it kept simple. I want my SMS messaging app to be only my SMS messaging app and not do anything else.

Only way I'll change is if i some how couldn't use the SMS messenger app anymore. I don't inagibe switching to Hangouts or All any time soon. I have friends in WhatsApp, and if I didn't need it to communicate with them, I'd get rid of that too.

As simple as possible. No complicated back end application algorithms doing things that I don't have complete control over (like automatically rerouting my messages over IP) is ever going to be acceptable to me.
 
The "I don't need/want it, so why should anyone else" attitude is strong with this thread.
 
So I decided to go e it the benefit of the doubt and look it up. Looks pretty and showcases some pretty impressive tech, but IMHO, most of it is useless gimmicks.

The whole "OMG we can use deep learning to identify what that is. Picture of and help you reply" thing is pretty cool and all, but I don't message so I can do so with a bot...

The feature offering end to end encryption is pretty cool, but then they had to gimp it so it isn't enabled all the time....

The whole "OMG, My text and emoticon can both get bigger and smaller" thing seems like a pretty silly gimmick as well.

It feels like they have run out of good ideas, throwing silly hyped gimmicks at us instead of getting back to basics and actually improving messaging.
 
My wife and I still use hangouts. Doesn't require additional software to be installed on a desktop platform. Works very well across all devices.

Not sure what's the point of the SMS app now days.
 
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So, Allo is now available...and it doesn't include SMS support in spite of requiring a phone number to work.
The interface is just like Hangouts. Only sans SMS and desktop support. I honestly don't see any real reason to use it unless Google kills off Hangouts.
We have messenger, messaging, and hangouts. I don't know why anyone would switch to this if they aren't forced to.
 
Been a Hangouts user for some time now, basically since day one, and I find it works just fine for me for SMS/chat/Google Voice calls, etc. In fact on my smartphone I don't even give out my actual phone number, I just use my Google Voice number for everything and have done so for like 3 years now without issues. When I looked into this Allo thing it had very little that I'd find interesting - this coming from a guy that was chatting online using basic text meaning black text on a white screen or something similar in the late 1970s - but then I dug further and all hell broke loose, literally. So then this happened:

Allo_Nope.png


and I couldn't have said it better myself so, Google, Allo and goodbye. ;)

ps
please don't fuck up Hangouts, it works fine, really...
 
Hangouts is the closest thing to iMessage I've found. It integrates SMS/MMS and still allows you to bypass them with its native texts. My only real complaint about it is the picture resizing.
I would have much preferred the make Hangouts more robust instead of introducing Allo. With all of the nags to swap to Messenger, something tells me they're going to drop SMS/MMS from it sooner than later.
 
Why is everybody complaining about the SMS integration? I think that chapter is done. You have Google Messenger, bunch of other apps, and moreover SMS is going nowhere. I can't remember the last time I sent the SMS. Even my wife never use the iMessage because everybody is on FB messenger or whatsapp or some other app. SMS is becoming less relevant nowdays.

Now, about the Allo, I think its great. I chat with my wife, some friends, but Hangouts is the choice when I am behind the desktop or laptop. You don't spam people to install Allo. It's more of a family app. That's how I see it. It's just another app and I am cool with it.
 
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