
Google Allo a Success or a Failure: Analysis of Data By Region - dounts
http://www.valuepenguin.sg/google-allo-success-or-failure-analysis-data-region
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vocatus_gate
I'm still puzzled and annoyed by Google's random abandonment of so many of
their projects, even ones that are heavily used (Reader), often without
warning or stated rationale. Honestly I just avoid new Google products because
I never know when they'll get randomly abandoned or axed.

The scatterbrain landscape of Google's messaging offerings is just one example
of this. GChat, Talk, Hangouts, Messenger, Allo, Duo, Google+ Chat, etc. Can
someone explain to me why TF they have so many messaging apps? It's confusing,
annoying, and requires too much onramp effort to install _yet another
messaging app_ just to talk to friends.

At this point people always retort "Well, Google is a fast-moving development
environment! Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks! Fail fast!"
Yeah, sure, that's great and everything, but if they never actually commit to
maintaining the things they build, it doesn't matter how cool or innovative
$LatestProduct is, because it won't be around long enough for anybody to find
out.

Google engineer Barry Schwartz once said:

"In prospect, capability seems way more important than useability. In
PRACTICE, the reverse is true."

In Google's case I would extend that to say "reliability and consistency is
more important than capability." I don't care what Allo does if I can't trust
Google to maintain it for more than few months before unceremoniously dumping
it to the side of the road like so many of their other offerings.

At this point everyone I know just uses WhatsApp and is done with it.

edit: Geostyx made a great comment: "Whenever I hear 'Google' my mind goes
straight to "thing that will be gone in 18 months""

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empath75
in retrospect, killing reader was probably the right decision. It seems like
RSS was on the way out, anyway.

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zamalek
Conversely, killing off Reader _could_ have been the reason RSS fell away.

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4ad
Fell away? RSS is an essential part of my life online. It didn't fell
anywhere. It works just fine like it always did.

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yladiz
It really is an analysis of the various regions e.g. Asia, Europe, USA, where
Allo was released, and it really is interesting data. It bombed in Asia save
for India, and had a lukewarm reception in most other places except parts of
the middle east (UAE, Qatar), the USA, and Argentina.

I speculate that it bombed in Asia because Google doesn't understand that
market really well; Korea, Japan, and Taiwan already have useful messaging
applications that are significantly more popular than any other way of
communicating. For example, many people in Korea communicate with their family
and friends using Kakao, and in Japan LINE accomplishes the same thing. Why
would you switch if you already have a way to message everyone you know?

I would guess actually that is the real reason for lukewarm reception in
general: there's no reason to switch if what you have now is good. I have no
reason to switch from Messenger, from texting, from Hangouts, to this new
offering that _may_ be better but isn't good enough to make me want to switch.
I am curious why it is so popular in India and the middle east though.

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neolefty
Being #1 in India seems like a success in and of itself, considering Allo is
entering such a crowded market.

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dounts
Not anymore. Check out our new data. Just updated the article in the same
link.

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rynop
The lack of unified SMS integration was a HUGE mistake IMO. As much as these
messaging apps want SMS to go away, its not. It is the only common "language"
across all devices and providers - not to mention the older generation has no
idea WTF all these messaging apps are.

My hope was that Allo was going to fix the disaster of a decision by google to
split SMS and Messages apart in Hangouts.

I want one app that supports SMS and messages and I want it web enabled so I
can use it from my computer. iMessage has this nailed.

I was a Google Fi customer. Before hangouts separated function I had an
awesome cross platform unified messaging experience. I'm switching to iPhone
after 7+ yrs on android partially due to this android messaging mess.

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tw04
SMS was a huge mistake, but by far the least of such mistakes. The BIGGEST,
IMO, was not allowing you to sign on from multiple devices, and not having a
desktop app. If I can only use messaging on one device, it's just about
useless to me in this day and age.

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rynop
Agreed. iMessage handles this great. I was hoping Allo was the iMessage
killer. I'm a google fanboy, and this next gen messaging direction by G is
really disappointing

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SCdF
I think it's a little early to tell whether or not it's a _complete_ failure,
it's only been out a couple of weeks.

It certainly hasn't gained traction. In terms of anecdata, I haven't
downloaded it for the same reason I don't use G+: no one I know is on it, so
why bother? Everyone I know already uses Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp or
sometimes Hangouts for IM.

It's also unclear what Allo does that the three mentioned apps above don't do.

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Nav_Panel
And Facebook Messenger provides a nice text messaging interface as well, so it
was an obvious switch to unify some of my streams of messaging.

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geostyx
I won't even bother trying it until it has desktop/browser support. Until
then, Telegram works amazing and everyone I talk to uses it.

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kzisme
I'm hoping it gets that option soon as well...Currently you aren't even able
to set it as your default SMS application either.

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geostyx
You can't use it for SMS because it's not like other SMS apps. When you send
an SMS on Allo, it goes through a random relay number controlled by Google,
not your number.

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kzisme
Ah I see - I was just looking for a hangouts replacement is all.

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ihsw
Looks like yet another product that Google will abandon quickly due to
lackluster interest.

There is absolutely no indication that the people behind Allo will make any
effort to mitigate the clear and present problems.

Sure, it has a couple features that stand out, but the shortcomings stick out
sharply, notably the pathetic SMS "integration."

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geostyx
It's a chicken and egg problem I think. I'm not going to latch on to Google
products because I expect them to just kill it in a couple years anyway.

Google kills products because not enough people use them.

If Google keeps Allo/Duo at the front of their messaging apps, adds desktop
support to Allo, and keep improving performance/features for the next 5+
years, then it might actually gain a decent userbase.

I use Telegram right now. It Just Works™ for me and the people I talk to. It's
fast, stable, and they keep adding features without it feeling like bloat. I
also don't feel like I have to worry about it getting abandoned in the next
couple years.

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estefan
They should really just stop branding the apps as Google, and only come out
from behind the curtain if there's traction so as to avoid damaging their
brand like this.

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geostyx
This. Whenever I hear "Google" my mind goes straight to "thing that will be
gone in 18 months"

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pawadu
I feel the same way. I just don't trust Google anymore, they have an awful
track record.

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roymurdock
What exactly was the end-user problem in the messaging space that Google was
attempting to solve with Allo?

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Fricken
Google assistant. It's designed to streamline the problem of 5 friends trying
to decide where to eat brunch on a sunday morning over sms, or anything kind
of on the fly logistical problem like that. They do make this pretty apparent
in their presentations.

I don't know, man. I've been waiting since I was a kid to see AI, and finally
some rough approximation of sci-fi grade AI is starting to materialize. But
everywhere in the internet all I hear is 'It's dumb... Who cares... Google
doesn't know what they're doing'

I don't know, is me being continually amazed by the services Google offers
some kind of character flaw or something? I don't understand.

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bryanlarsen
While this will probably end up being true, it's way too early to call. The
Google Assistant in Allo was a pre-release version, the full version is
supposed to be released soon as announced yesterday.

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jccalhoun
i don't understand why allo and duo are separate apps and not just part of the
hangouts app. I can't believe that no one at google said, "Isn't it weird that
we are releasing two more messaging apps?" so there must be some logic behind
it but I can't see it.

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ashark
My best guess, just from observing Google from the outside, is that they have
a real problem doing _boring_ stuff. Maintain something? Boring, won't do it.
Fix developer-facing bugs in Android? Boring, won't do it (instead, let it sit
ignored for 2 years then inaccurately mark the bug obsolete). Document
anything beyond some surface-level relatively-fun-to-write stuff? Boring,
won't do it. _Update_ docs? Boring, maybe half-ass it and leave the rest
outdated, but don't bother to mark it as such. Nitty-gritty work to really
support _e.g._ Material Design? OMG so boring. Port existing library/SDK to
one of our other platforms (I'm looking at you Android Maps API)? Ugh, no, I
guess I'll do the minimum possible so I can move on to something more fun.
Improve performance on any of our many poorly-performing products? BORING
BORING BORING, no.

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daveguy
> By incorporating AI, Google Allo attempts to provide a “superior” chatting
> experience. It features automated “Smart Replies”, integrated Google
> Assistant that will answer your questions, and easier ways to express one’s
> feelings with emojis and pictures.

Is it just me? It seems every time Google and others incorporate "AI" into a
product it makes it more awkward to work with. It feels like adding AI these
days is only slightly better than "we added a Clippy module". Search seems
less direct, more map fails, and asking "ok Google" is a mess.

Has anyone tried Allo and are you able to comment on that "predictive
response" or ability to ask the Google AI? Is it well integrated and useful or
Clippy-like annoying?

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awfullyjohn
Network Effect? I have another theory.

Allo is #1 in India because a Jared paid people to download it ;)

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avenueb
I appreciate Google not forced all Google customers to install Allo ala
Facebook but it's hard not to acknowledge Facebook forcing Messenger on
Facebook users didn't achieve their goal of widespread adoption of Messenger.

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camiller
Facebook Forced you to install messenger? Not only have I not installed
facebook messenger, I removed the facebook app and just use the mobile web
interface. In chrome for android if I select "Request Desktop Site" I can
still get to the messaging part.

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decaysackparity
Isn't this the standard with large companies, you just can't innovate. Too
many MBAs want to tell you how it should be done.

I also like how AI is now used to describe algorithms, thanks ad wizards.

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camiller
There is an assertion in the article that I'm not sure about.

"This is most likely because Android in developed markets in Americas and
Europe are more updated and are pushing the Google Allo app through automatic
downloads."

I really don't think that Allo was automatically pushed to anyone, or maybe
only nexus devices which is a really small share of the market.

I'd like to see the author of the article back up the claim.

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msvan
Isn't this basically the same story we've seen with Google and social ten
times now? They really want to be a part of this space.

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Pharylon
Maybe if they worked to improve what they have instead of constantly scrapping
everything and restarting, it would help.

Just add Google Assistant and easier searching/inserting to Hangouts. Add
phone number sign-up too. Or, hell, just make Allo Hangout-compatible so
people can switch to the "new" app still talk to their friends that are on the
other network.

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Pharylon
So it's the Google+ of chat. It has one or two neat things, but there's no
killer feature that will drive adoption. In the end, the things it does right
are far outweighed by the features it's missing that people expect (multiple
devices, a desktop app, etc).

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untog
Odd that the article suggests Allo is a competitor to Facebook. Messenger
perhaps, but Facebook overall?

Either way, I use Google accounts for almost everything but I still haven't
downloaded Allo, because I still don't see any reason why I should.

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fps
I think "Facebook" here means "Whatsapp", which is owned by Facebook.

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dounts
We actually just updated our article with latest data in October. It looks WAY
worse for every single country.

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jaxondu
As predicted. There already are WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger. All
these apps combine chat and video chat in one. And Google wants us to install
two apps.

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ajdlinux
Is it just me or has Google done basically no advertising for Allo?

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dounts
they've done so much pr for this tho

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vetinari
They have a weird way to introduce new products.

1) they make some PR event, to create hype.

2) Then, they will say, that the product will be released later (in the case
of Allo, they didn't even provide a specific date).

3) Then, the product is released, but in the staged way. You may or may not be
able to download, as it will be fully available 'in the coming weeks'.

4) During these few weeks, you will forget, that there is a such product and
when it is finally available to you, you won't bother.

So after all, the outlined steps are a good way to kill any hype the PR event
from step 1 was able to create.

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dounts
I actually updated our article with new data from October. It looks WAY worse
for every single country.

