Google on Wednesday announced it will stop supporting its smart messaging app Allo effective March 2019. The search-engine firm paused investments for Allo in April, transferring its entire workforce and all resources for Android Messages.
Allo users can export and save their chat history before the due date.
“Given Messages’ continued momentum, we’ve decided to stop supporting Allo to focus on Messages. Allo will continue to work through March 2019 and until then, you’ll be able to export all of your existing conversation history from the app,” the company added.
The app was launched on September 21, 2016 to rival with instant messaging (IM) apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Line, WeChat among others. But this didn’t go as the search-engine firm had planned considering it’s poor performance. Meanwhile its sister-app; Duo is performing fairly.
Just like any other IM apps, using Allo you don’t need a Google account to sign-in but rather your phone number. The app can help you make plans, find information; such as flight schedules, or hotel – all within your chats. And the more you use it, the more it improved over time.
It also equips a Smart Reply feature that provides suggestions to the users for replies at the time of texting. It uses the AI to read the text and reply patterns of the users, and then comes up with relevant suggestions. Meanwhile, it has an incognito mode designed to make the chats more secure. Moreover, the chats will also expire once the conversation is over. This was criticized a lot as it’s reported that Google saves users conversation.
Computer Scientist and former CIA employee; Edward Snowden in 2016 a day after the launch of the app asked people not to use the app. He warned people people about the lack of privacy of the application.
Snowden posted several tweets in the criticism of the app, defining it as “A Google app that records every message you ever send and makes it available to police upon request.” A number of people supported his opinion and this could be one of the reason for its poor performance.
Meanwhile, Google is now focusing on Android Messages. According to media reports, over 175 million users are on the service every month. Google has partnered with over 40+ carriers and device makers to make the experience better. The company says that it will continue to add smart features to Android Messages to upgrade the SMS platform further.
