Tech giant rejoins messaging wars with new artificially intelligent app, Allo

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September 22, 2016 8:25 AM

Allo, coupled with Duo, Google's new video chat app, represent the tech giant's renewed attempts to gain ground in mobile communication.

Google Allo messaging app

The tech giant has launched Allo, the messaging app it announced back in May, and it is probably the most intelligent messaging app you've ever used.

Allo is equipped with Google's Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant and search functionality baked in, which means it offers a lot of stuff other apps don't offer.

The app will automatically suggest replies for you to send based on a particular conversation you may be having. For example, if you are making plans with a friend to go see a movie, it will suggest movies, show times, and cinemas. You can even ask for the score of a particular football game.

“One of the principles we’ve applied here is not to have lots and lots of clutter,” explains Nick Fox, VP of Google’s communications products, according to a ReCode report. “We don’t want people to be having to dig through the app to find the thing they want. We want to surface the right things at the right time.”

This "surfacing" happens within the otherwise typical messaging conversation, which is Google's angle with the Allo app because most people already have these kinds of typical conversations inside of other companies' apps.

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The AI is the differentiator for Google as it continues to try to capture a share of the consumer messaging markets from big players like Apple (iMessage) and Facebook (WhatsApp and Messenger), both of whom already have a huge head start.

Be that as it may, Fox says he isn't fazed about Google's late start.

“While messaging has been around for a while, smart messaging is much newer,” said Fox. “I do think this is a new era where we have a lot of advantages building on top of a lot of these investments we’ve been making around machine intelligence.”

This may be the case eventually, since Google has struggled to crack messaging and social media in the past. Google+, its Facebook competitor, has fallen off the grid. Its native Android messaging app is just for texting, and Google now says it sees Hangouts (formerly Gchat) as an enterprise messaging client for stuff like inter-office communications.

Allo, coupled with Duo, Google's new video chat app, represent the tech giant's renewed attempts to gain ground in mobile communication. Allo is available right now for both iOS and Android users in various regions across the world as gradual rollout begins but you can register on the Google Play app store.

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