Google Allo is now available on the web | Hacker News Reader

Google Allo is now available on the web

allo.google.com

39 pointsPleaseHelpMe31 comments

> Almost there! Just visit g.co/alloforweb in your Chrome browser.

> Don't have Chrome? Get it

Ah yes, we're back in 2002 again.

Support for other browsers are coming. I am neither working on this nor a Google engineer, but I saw a tweet from relavent developers working on this.

In 2002, it was much more difficult to support multiple browsers, and not doing so was still (eventually) frowned upon.

In 2017, with the combination of pretty close parity between VM's technology support (even Chakra) and the range of powerful preprocessors, build tools and shims, if you're not supporting multiple major user agents you're an objectively bad frontend developer. This isn't about the cost benefit of committing time to smaller market shares because the cost is negligible. The only explanation can be incompetence.

... or that you're the maker of said browser and stand to gain from actively deprioritising your competitors. I don't know that this is policy at Google, but it's either one or the other.

You're right. I've built pretty complex offline first web applications (using Indexeddb, Service Workers etc) initially on Chrome but when I tested them on Firefox and Edge there was just one minor bug on Edge (Indexeddb expected undefined but was given null in one case, Chrome and Firefox did not complain). So it definitely is possible to build sites that work on all browsers.

Maybe "use Chrome" means "not tested on Firefox and Edge?"

I wonder if the Allo team would have thought of doing this if Chrome's browser share was half of what its current today.

https://i.imgur.com/12g0j6f.png

Google is a complete joke when it comes to understanding people.

Allo Duo Google Chat Google Meet

Four. Four different chatting applications. Whatsapp has one. Facebook has one. Apple has one. WeChat has one. Google has four.

You forgot YouTube chat

and Google Docs chat

What about hangouts?

I'm sure Facebook has two - WhatsApp and FB Messenger - and is struggling to figure out (and working on) how to keep just one and eliminate the other.

Facebook has many apps: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and maybe more

I was referring to primarily text/emoji based, person-to-person apps/platforms (similar to Allo). That's why I listed only WhatsApp and FB Messenger and intentionally ignored the other ones.

It's me, not you, Allo. I loathe communication apps that rely only on phone numbers and won't work without access to one's contacts/address book. My phone number is highly important to me from a privacy angle and I don't give it away willy-nilly. I'd feel a little more comfortable when this works with email addresses alone, which I have many of and use different ones for different purposes.

I'm hugely disappointed! And where's Hangouts Chat? I think Google tries to implement some sort of diversity in their product line as well!

2011: Google tries to compete with Facebook: Google+ 2016: Google tries to compete with Telegram, Whatsapp and aton of other messenger: Allo

I think Google is totally lost, because since when centralized communication is a bad thing? They didn't get why Facebook released Messenger as a separate app or why they bought WhatsApp.

This is not about technology, this is about user war. Back in 2011, Google got seriously scared about Facebook growth. So they naively came up with this Google+ idea, which of course died and joined the long list of Google's embarrassing tries in the social networking space.

It is sad to see the negative effects of Facebook, on one side on users and stealing their privacy and data, and on the other side on giants like Google, who used to create cool projects like Gmail back when the internet was a cool breath.

The screaming-monster image and the context-free exhortation to switch to Chrome (no, thanks!) do very little to inform me about what Allo is or why I would want to use it. This does not strike me as a particularly good design.

I wonder if this means Hangouts is going to be deprecated soon.

I doubt it. Hangouts is a widely used tool in the Enterprise.

Not to mention no one is using Allo (based on anecdotes).

To be fair, the primary reason that my wife and I don't use Allo is because it was never available on the web.

EDIT: And now after signing in, I realized that what I /really/ need is a desktop app...

I installed it today out of curiosity - 15 contacts had it installed, and google play reports over 10 milion downloads - so someone must be using it.

That being said - i was perfectly fine with hangouts and hate fragmentation.

How many of those are active users though? According to this story from Jan, there are very few new downloads:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/01/31/google-allo-drops-of...

And some of those installs may be due to the spammy nagware scheme google uses to force people to install it so they can see messages:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/allo/QaFAiTvTEr...

I honestly have no idea, I installed it out of curiosity to see the web interface built in polymer. Ideally I'd just see google stick to hangouts.

Did anyone else notice that QR code changes on reload? Is that simply for analytics? Or is there another purpose?

It refreshes with a new QR code every few seconds it seems. Reload not required.

Security. It's token based.

So no support for anything other than Chrome and no support for devices other than Android? Really?

At one point, Google, you had a preferred messaging position on my devices.

For me, from my perspective, you pissed it away.

"Bye-bye"

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