Allo, Google's new messaging app
theverge.com
theverge.com
Oh thank goodness! I'm so happy to have another vaguely defined and horrifically executed messaging/chat/collaboration/VTC/whatever app from Google. This will simplify things.
Those were the days, right?
I'm currently doing without WhatsApp because I have no way to activate it on my replacement phone (dropped original one) - the SIM tied to my WhatsApp account doesn't work overseas and I'm using a local SIM.
It's a frustrating, confusing experience. What's wrong with tying this to your Google account?
The fragmentation of chat systems is already crazy, and now Google needs to have two?
My prediction: Allo runs for two years then gets a half-hearted merge into the Hangouts client, bringing over a couple of major features but not the ones that made people actually prefer it as a chat client.
Or, as I recently learned after switching to Project Fi, the worst of both worlds where I am forbidden from using Google Voice on my Fi phone because ... reasons? I can't even navigate to the Voice website without considerable hoopjumpery because Chrome realizes that I'm on a Fi phone and immediately redirects me to the Play store where I can install Fi - you know, that app that came with my Fi phone?
Just damn.
I'm with that other commenter: I thought, mistakenly, for a while there that we were going to have chat interop, if not from XMPP then from the multiple WebRTC products. But, ha ha, I must be new here.