
Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon - ganeshkrishnan
https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-down/
======
8ytecoder
Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product
managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an
iPhone would understand what iMessages is and what FaceTime is. What is what
and what you can do with each. Now explain it to me Google - what's your
vision? (Or is it "target end state" in engineering speak?) As customers we
want (at most) one chat application and one video calling application. What is
it going to be?

It's the exact same story with Music applications too. Android Music and
Google Play Music seems abandoned. YT Music is pushed down the throat with a
ton of the features of GPM missing. Subscription pricing keeps changing
around. Same story with Gmail/Inbox. One by one I have left all Google's
products now.

That said, whoever is running Google Maps is a genius. It's one product that
gets it right. The fact that overlayed business listing, transit, traffic and
now ride share systems ...etc. is just brilliant. We take it for granted. But
if Google Maps ended up in the hands of whoever was in charge of their
messaging or music strategy we'd have - Google Maps, Google Directions, Google
Transit, Google Businesses, Google Restaurants and Google Rides.

~~~
ams6110
I'd put Google Drive/Docs/Sheets in there as home runs. They just keep getting
better and better. I hardly ever think about using a desktop office suite any
more. Remember when collaborating on a document meant emailing copies and
revisions back and forth to each other? Unthinkable now.

But Allo? My thought was "oh, another Google product I never heard of is
shutting down."

~~~
doodliego
No way do I put all my personal documents in the cloud of a company that
doesn't do customer service, gets rid of whole product lines without warning
whenever it feels like, and has no recourse to actual human help if you're
locked out of your accounts and can't get authenticated.

You would want to back up your google documents offline or on another server
constantly, which defeats the whole purpose.

~~~
xuki
You can pay for G Suite, it's not that expensive. I'm on a grandfathered plan
(free) - so no phone support but email support is available, and the agent
even called me to check if I was able to resolve my problem.

------
woodruffw
Google dumped an _incredible_ amount of money into Allo's marketing at my
(large state) university -- they plastered many buildings with full-length
advertisements, filled all of the local businesses with pamphlets, and even
drove students around campus in weird little (electric?) buggies[1].

Despite all that, I don't think I know anybody who installed (much less
regularly used) Allo.

Edit: They also bought Snapchat filters that were geofenced to the campus.

[1]:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=allo+campus+car](https://www.google.com/search?q=allo+campus+car)

~~~
whitepoplar
People can smell when a product isn't earnest. From the beginning, Allo
smelled like a directive by a Google VP to "get messaging market share."

~~~
GuiA
Not that I’m defending Allo, but I don’t know how useful your distinction is.
What is an earnest product then?

Any product released by a company that has bills to pay is released to “get
market share”.

~~~
smt88
I assumed GP meant that there's nothing in it for the user, only for the
company.

Other examples include carrier-branded apps that come preinstalled on phones.

~~~
whitepoplar
Exactly this.

------
xnx
I complain about Google having too many competing/overlapping products, so I
can't really complain when they close/merge them.

The best time to shutdown Allo was before it launched, the second best time is
now.

~~~
drewg123
From an Xoogler's perspective, the launches are all about the promos. Eg, just
think about all those engineers who would not have gotten a promotion because
then they would not have had a product launch in their promo packet.

~~~
riku_iki
But there should be some VP which will be accountable for spent budget on dead
product..

~~~
dymk
Ah - but if you're the one with VPs reporting to you, you _best_ not foster an
environment where taking risks (even like this) is punished, if due diligence
seems like it was carried out.

And you have to be _very_ conservative with what you consider a violation of
that threshold.

------
brownbat
I usually jump right on board when Google engineers build something new.

I must be some kind of masochist.

Is there any internal understanding that these head fakes are punishing to
fans?

Me and my friends were the ones that used plus. And buzz. And wave.

Now we're terrified to buy anything on the Play store.

I'm arguably a fanboy and even I am starting to worry that humanity might be
better off if all the talent at Google was out from under their direct
control. If only all the project teams at Google were free agents or in
startups where the baseline comparison wasn't constantly asking if their
product was as lucrative as advertising...

Be Bell Labs and dump your enormous profits into fundamental research with no
expectation of return. Or be Softbank and just incubate the world.

But paying a bunch of talented engineers to build and maintain things you will
kill seems cruel to the engineers, the customers, and maybe even humanity.

We already had Signal, et al. We could have used these cycles for other
things.

------
gundmc
Hacker News: LOL! Google has so many messaging apps, their product strategy
sucks!

Google: They're right, we need to focus our messaging strategy. Let's
consolidate our platforms.

Hacker News: OMG! Google deprecates everything! Classic Google

~~~
drstewart
Everyone except Google knew Allo was a bad idea before it even launched
though.

~~~
moonsun
Personally, I'd be on board with Allo if it was incognito mode by default with
no option for the currently default mode.

~~~
iainmerrick
That wouldn’t be a Google product.

------
egwynn
Non-amp link: [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-
down/](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-down/)

Also, s/it’s/its/

------
ydnaclementine
I forgot which HN thread I read this, but an ex-googler said something like:
"the most important thing to do for career growth at google is to launch your
product, doesn't matter how shit/half assed/etc it is. You don't get credit
for maintaining the old stuff."

Reading that put a lot of Google's actions into perspective (how many chat
clients do they really need?, youtube music, etc)

~~~
jxdxbx
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379394)

------
alphabettsy
Hangouts and now this?

Their track-record is one of the reasons I don’t adopt personally or
recommenced new Google services to friends and family.

~~~
kyrra
FYI, there was an update to that article that stated (from the lead for
Hangouts) that Hangouts has no set shutdown yet, and they plan on
transitioning everyone to Hangouts Chat/Meet before Hangouts Classic goes
down.

see: [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-
shutting-d...](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-shutting-
down/)

~~~
iainmerrick
I have never understood why Google always exposes these account migrations to
end users. Okay, something significant about the implementation is changing,
and that takes development time, sure; why do users need to know or care about
it? Just figure out how to make the migration as seamless as possible for
them.

~~~
joshuamorton
They didn't, this was leaked.

~~~
iainmerrick
From the official blog post:

“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—here are
instructions on how to do so.”

That’s not terrible, but the bar is very low for this kind of thing. It’s
hardly seamless.

------
thwy12321
Google's main problem is that they only promote people for releasing new
products. So all the engineers and product people are highly incentive to only
work on new launches. Doesn't even matter what it is. So now they end up with
all these garbage products laying around, none of which make them any money.

~~~
baroffoos
They also only care about stupid metrics. One google dev said they got given
an old project and they found it was full of bugs and reporting loads of bad
info so the dev added a bunch of tests that picked up on the bugs and bad data
and then they were denied the promotion because the errors logged from the
program they were working on went up since they started working on it.

~~~
billylindeman
this kind of nonsense will be the death of google

~~~
baroffoos
I'm not so sure. Googles core product is search and that has been fairly rock
solid as long as it has existed. A lot of the fuckery has been around their
other products and I think the company could probably afford to shut down most
of them and continue to run fine.

~~~
thwy12321
I always wonder if the other projects are just retainer projects. They dont
really care as much what happens, they just dont want those engineers on the
open market.

~~~
erik_seaberg
I think they saw Microsoft miss the Next Big Thing™, and they're afraid it
could happen to them, so they're investing in _everything_ while the
AdSense/AdWords cash cows last.

------
jaimex2
Google have all but eroded all trust in their chat products. I can't see
anyone adopting anything they ever release in the future, they are going to
have to purchase an existing successful product. I certainly wasn't going to
use Allo or anything else after they killed Hangouts.

------
unsignedint
Personally, I will miss Hangouts more than Allo, and RCS is not an direct
replacement for Hangouts either. One thing I _hate_ about Allo is its use of
phone number as user ID, so the same goes for RCS.

Just because I'm willing to chat with someone really doesn't mean I am willing
to provide phone numbers to them.

Edit: Repeated Allo, where I meant RCS.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Personally, I will miss Hangouts more than Allo, and RCS is not an direct
> replacement for Hangouts either.

The replacement for Hangouts is more Hangouts, not RCS (that is, per the
article, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet are being opened to consumers next
year, and are the official replacement for Hangouts classic for consumers,
just as they already were for enterprise.)

> One thing I hate about Allo is its use of phone number as user ID, so the
> same goes for Allo.

I assume one of these Allos is supposed to be RCS?

~~~
Raidion
I agree, I'm of the opinion "hangouts" isn't dead. I don't see them removing a
chat option from gmail. So far, they've pretty much kept the consumer and
enterprise gmail experience the same. I feel like Google knows that just
setting an if(enterprise) and hiding hangouts in gmail would just piss a LOT
of people off, so I full expect them to find the brand with the best available
and flexible tech stack, and just merge hangouts and whatever else into one
thing that they'll call something different but will still be mostly the same,
in the exact same spot in gmail.

------
rubatuga
Seriously what the fuck is google doing?

~~~
TwoNineA
Throwing shit at wall until something sticks?

Example: Google Talk, Messages, Hangouts, Allo

~~~
barry-cotter
I still miss Google Chat. I spent at least a hundred hours using that, then
they changed it to Google Talk and I used it maybe three more hours. Trash
fire.

~~~
pvg
Wasn't chat just an extension of Google Talk into the gmail web client?

~~~
barry-cotter
Gchat worked both in the browser and years after I started using it in browser
as an app. Google Talk was a forced downgrade of a working app to an app that
used way more data to not work for most practical purposes. I am ignorant of
the technical details but Gchat worked and that was the first and last time
I’ve spent more than ten minutes on a google chat platform.

They had a massive base of users in everyone who had a gmail account, many of
whom used Gchat and they threw it away. It’s like if Apple managed to so badly
screw up iMessage that it disappeared from use.

~~~
pvg
Yeah I think you have the history somewhat backwards. Gtalk was the original
app and then it got integrated into Gmail as well. The abandonment of Gtalk
and related bits is definitely one of those weird and seemingly inexplicable
user-hating moves.

------
burger_moon
Does anyone have a good alternative for someone who is not tech savvy at all
and on an Android phone?

I set this up on my mom’s phone because she doesn’t get good enough cell
reception at or around her place so an internet based messaging system works
best. She is in very poor health and can barely hold the phone so something
that doesn’t have a lot of small icons and in general just easy to setup and
use would be great.

~~~
secabeen
Setup a family slack. Works well, full media support. Options for bringing
other people in and having family connection there, or you can just DM each
other.

~~~
saagarjha
Slack is significantly more complex than most messaging apps.

~~~
paxys
Is it though, beyond the initial setup (team creation etc., which only needs
to be done by a single person)?

------
SMLP
It was a great idea... but then so was google plus... google buzz... the
problem with a good idea is the people go where the people are. If they had
only just bundled it as the default on Android One it may have just worked.

------
pacomerh
Another one to the cemetery
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

~~~
Declanomous
I don't really think it is fair to include hardware in that list. It makes
sense to memorialize the death of a hardware line, but it doesn't really make
sense to memorialize every single piece of hardware. That's a bit like
memorializing every minor version of software that is superceded by a new
version.

~~~
Steltek
Even then, the list of hardware profiles taking a dirt nap is pretty long.
Gone are the budget Nexus phones and any true Android tablets. All they have
left are a laughable "flagship" phone, a high end Chromebook, and a kiloton of
Nest smart home gadgets.

------
godelski
I think Allo is really cool. A lot of the features it had were pretty
incredible.

 _BUT_ besides this I had a lot of problems.

1) It is not privacy oriented. (I still have _enough_ trust to Google that if
they explicitly state something as privacy oriented I would believe them. But
that's not their business model)

2) No one used it. I have more friends that use Signal than Allo. Even though
I liked all the features, those aren't enough to push people over. I feel the
only way it would have succeeded is if they completely replaced messenger with
allo (I thought that was the plan).

But I hope Signal implements some of these features. Really what was useful is
inline google searching. Possibly inline DDG searching?

------
russley
Duo can't be that far behind then, can it? I can't even remember the last time
I thought about it.

~~~
xeromal
I think Duo has had more success.

------
yjftsjthsd-h
IRC it is. Can Google not see the image that they project anymore?

------
Twirrim
Good to see the shuttering of Allo.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but one of the big reasons I didn't use Allo
was because they keep shuttering their apps.

I'm not going to use something I have doubts will last more than a year or
two. I just don't have any use for such a product.

------
hbcondo714
Snowden on Google Allo: ‘Don’t Use It’

[https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/778588715736260608](https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/778588715736260608)

------
ravenstine
Coincidentally, I uninstalled it a few hours ago before even reading this
story. Feels good.

------
hartator
What’s Google recommanded messaging solution now? It seems a mess now.

------
qwerty456127
The AI that makes decisions at Google should run for president in
Madagascar[1]

[1] [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-
everything](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything)

------
martin1975
What's app, Google? (pun intended)

------
jiveturkey
g’bye, allo

[brit accent]

------
velobro
Looks like Google is finally discovering they are just a SCUMMY advertising
company and shouldn't be building consumer products that don't directly feed
into that advertising.

~~~
maxxxxx
That would be a brilliant insight actually. I would love it if they didn't
even try to make consumer products.

