Google Allo and Duo, new messaging apps | Hacker News Reader

Google Allo and Duo, new messaging apps

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32 pointsr0muald38 comments

Can anyone explain the management at Google and why they continue to produce these products that seem to be copies of copies of programs that have been failures, before they even launch? Is it like an octopus where the 7th tentacle doesn't know what the 1st is doing?

I'm very curious about the decision making process at Google these days.

If the world needs anything, it's one more messaging app. /s

But wait, this one allows you to make your own emojis that you can only use within its app!

Don't forget the scaling text and emojis!

Google is (in)famous for their application process and hiring fairly young people from "top" school. That gets them a lot of brilliant people, but not necessarily good leaders nor energetic followers. The company itself is a comfortable home for some, a stepping stone for others and make more money then they know what to do with. That combined makes the collective fear of failure far greater than the need for success.

I guess the high potential reward outweighs the low chance of success for each individual product. Same reason anyone else makes a messaging app, except that Google has other ways to capitalize on a success than hoping to be bought up.

People are obviously messaging each other, so the demand is proven, and exactly which messaging apps make it big seems to be a bit random, so from that perspective pumping out a lot of them and seeing what sticks is not the worst strategy.

The safe bet is buying whoever comes out on top, but prices are a bit inflated at the moment.

Oh look, Google's 67th messaging app attempt. I'm sure it's going to be a killer this time... Preset responses, seriously??? bwahahahaha, only a socially challenged googler could've thought of something like this.

> Preset responses, seriously???

I'm guessing that they've got some pretty good experience with the reception the same feature has had on Inbox, where its been around for a while. Just because its not something that seems useful to you (I rarely use it, but it has sometimes been useful for quick and contextually appropriate acknowledgements) doesn't mean it doesn't have value to the broad base of users Google is targeting.

My phone has had present SMS responses since my Motorola RAZR. I've never used them. I can't imagine why I would start now.

Facebook/LINE stickers are a kind of preset response that's totally popular. Even the ones with words in them.

The responses aren't preset, they learn how you respond to certain scenarios. Not everyone is going to have the same choices, it just makes your generic response easier to send.

FYI, they use ANN to understand your messages and only then show choices of quick replies. Think of it as a simplified google search auto complete, which at least personally saves me a ton of time.

No desktop app means it will never be able to compete with Skype. I don't even see a reason trying out the phone apps.

Similarly, Messenger and Whatsapp have awesome web clients. Very surprised by the mobile-only strategy.

Whatsapp has also a PC/Mac desktop app since a few days.

This is absolutely baffling. Not a replacement for Hangouts, doesn't integrate with SMS... it's dead before it has even started.

I just don't get it anymore. There are two primary modes for chatting, SMS and IM. Integrating with both has its challenges, but it can't be impossible. If someone could just create an app that makes messaging via the two systems seamless, they'd dominate the market.

Signal works nicely enough for me.

Only on Android is Signal able to merge its IM with SMS. iOS doesn't expose this capability so only iMessage does it.

Well if you buy into a walled garden you can't expect other devs to be able to get in if the owner of the ecosystem won't allow it.

You mean like iMessage?

Yes. Although, not being locked into a single company's ecosystem of hardware and software is another requirement I have.

Does it even integrate with Hangouts? I'm pretty confused right now and haven't heard anything about that.

And why would anyone like to chat with people on a client that has a built in feature for canned responses?

Features only an engineer could think of.

i can imagine clicking even once on the preset responses and then receiving a barrage of curses from the other side from having used it.

I use suggested responses on Inbox all the time. People tend to send lots of email that only needs a one line response, and the suggested responses of "Thanks for confirming", "That time works for me", etc. are perfect.

Likewise in social messaging apps there are a lot of "transactional" style conversations where you need to confirm receiving the text message with some expected response. In an instant messaging program these bot suggested responses will work fine for all the one line responses like "cya soon!", "looking forward to it!" , and even "I love you too!"

If anything bot suggested responses mean that the longer form less vanilla text messages you type out are more meaningful. It will encourage people to send stuff that isn't so basic and trivial that a bot can form an adequate response.

Email messages you describe are formal and generic replies can be useful. But hitting canned replies to my friends and spouse is a bit sad.

That's why Google 'learns' your writing style and adjusts the responses to match your way of messaging.

The way I see it there are two types of messages to friends and spouse. There is the silly little stuff like "Check out this cute dog!" and if Google suggests "Awwww!" as a response, and that was pretty much what I was going to type out anyway then I'll just hit the "canned reply".

If its a serious message though like someone telling me that their relative is in the hospital I'm probably not going to hit an automatic reply like "Sorry to hear that", I'm going to type out a longer message.

Chat and VoIP networks with no desktop clients...? I'll stay with Hangouts, thanks.

"Allo is a smart messaging app that makes your conversations easier and more expressive"

For a moments I though they found the cure for socially awkward people like myself :)

And yet another feature-limited non-standard IM solutions to alienate everyone even more.

So I should have 3 different Google messaging apps? Please stop

If you're on iOS, you should use Google Hangouts to communicate with people across iOS, Android, and Chrome. But it doesn't integrate with the portable Google Voice number, so you'll also want that app. And now YouTube has been relaunched with native messaging capabilities, so you'll want to install that too to talk with YouTube users. But that won't let you communicate with all the people on Google+, so you'll need to install that too. But of course, you won't get all the latest features for all these messaging apps unless you get the new Allo and Duo, so you should really have all 6. If you're on Android, you can add a 7th with the native SMS app.

Actually, I forgot that you'll also want to talk in small groups about special interests, so you'll need Google Spaces. You really only need 8 apps to message people with Google.

End to end encryption ... with bots examining your chat to provide adds. Maybe we should call this end to _and_ google :-)

Have to say, that restaurant booking example is pretty handy. Can't see myself using this though

Is this supposed to replace Hangouts or be a Hangouts that's attached to your phone's SMS? Also, where does this mean Voice's SMS capabilities are now canned?

Do these have anything to do with Jibe, or is this yet another orthogonal dimension to messaging at Google?

It turns out they have nothing to do with Jibe. This is what I was able to dig up: http://www.telirati.com/2016/05/telirati-analysis-18-quic-br...

This is just becoming ridiculous..

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