At its I/O 2016 developer conference, Google announced two new messaging apps: Allo and Duo. The company has doubled its number of messaging apps, which also includes Hangouts and Messenger. For now, it seems the company plans to keep all of them, as it hasn't announced any retirements or app mergers.
VB requested clarification from Google:
Allo is a messaging app that uses your phone number, is mobile-only, and was built specifically to leverage Google's machine learning, natural language processing, and AI features that didn't exist just a few years ago. Think of it as the company's child's play that aims to test the limits of what a mobile messaging app can do .
Duo is a one-to-one video calling app. It's mobile-only, and it's built to be fast, thanks to Web Real-Time Communication ( WebRTC ) . It's supposed to have fewer call drops, and it supports connections over Wi-Fi as well as over a phone provider.
Hangouts is a 3-year-old messaging platform that has integrated many features, such as support for SMS and video calling. It is cross-platform and works on desktop and laptop computers.
Messenger is Google's messaging service, an SMS app that comes standard on Android devices. The company uses the app to promote Rich Communication Services (RCS) , which enables Android devices to offer features such as group messaging, IP voice calls, and file sharing .
Allo and Duo are not yet officially released, and will be available later this summer. All of these apps are managed by the same team at Google (Communications product team) founded about a year and a half ago by Nick Fox.
We recently saw Google announce Spaces. However, this service is not a messaging app, but a social app, like Google+.
Google's messaging strategy has been confusing (in 2013, the company had Google Talk, Hangouts, and Google+ Messenger all at once), and it doesn't look like it's changing. Meanwhile, competitors WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger (both owned by Facebook) are both top messaging apps, with 1 billion and 900 million users, respectively.
Facebook is completely dominating the space, and Google seems to be just experimenting. The company seems to be developing apps from scratch to figure out what might work as an innovation.
The difference between the last two applications is the use of AI and machine learning technologies, two features that Facebook has already integrated.
Let's hope that one day Google will come up with a messaging app.
