No, this is not the return of that fabulous sitcom set during World War II. This is the new app from Google that just might revolutionise chat and search. However, Google hasn’t had a great history with chat apps, remember Hangouts? So what’s Allo all about?
Photo Credits: PG3. LEAD
Google Allo is new chat app for Android and iPhone. It has the Google Assistant built in and it’s rolling out today. It does the things you expect from a messaging app: sends pictures, lets you share fun stickers, works for group chats, and so on. If for some reason you abhor the dozen or so widely-used chat apps out there today, maybe Allo will appeal to you (assuming you can also get your friends to use it). But to succeed, Google needs much more than fine. It needs something special. It needs something to make users switch away from those other apps (and to redeem itself after the slow, sad slide of Google Hangouts). What could Google do to give itself an advantage? What does Google have in its arsenal of capabilities?
How to get it
Allo is available on both Android phones and iPhones — but that’s it. Google hasn’t made it available on the web, on desktop, or on tablets. In fact, you can’t even use the same account on multiple phones. The Google Assistant will only be available in English to start, but it will be coming to more countries soon. Allo identifies you by your phone number (which it verifies with a text message), which is great because it means you don’t have to fiddle with account setup. You can associate your Allo account with your main Google ID (for me, this happened automatically) or keep it separate if you’d prefer that.
What if someone doesn’t have it?
If your contact doesn’t have the app installed, one of two things happen. Both are actually kind of interesting. If they’re on an iPhone, they’ll receive an SMS with your name, the contents of your message, and a link to download the app. If they’re on an Android phone, something new and intriguing happens. Google is calling it an "app preview notification," and basically it shoots a notification directly to your Android device instead of going through SMS. Your friend will get a notification that looks and acts almost as if they had the app installed in the first place, message content and all. It means they won’t incur any SMS fees, either. Your recipient can reply within the notification, or tap on it to install the app.
Meet the Google Assistant
There are two ways of talking to the Google Assistant. You can chat directly at it, or you can ask it to join your chats by typing "@google" and asking it a question. Google is calling this a "Preview Edition" of the Assistant. That’s partially because this Assistant is still a little undefined in Google World: we know it’s in Allo, coming in the Amazon Echo competitor Google Home, and has some sort of relationship with Google Now. But beyond that the differences between the Assistant and Now and Search are really complicated.
Fortunately, talking to the Assistant in Allo is not complicated at all. You type your query, it answers, you type follow-up questions, and it answers those. It’s very, very good at web search; it also knows your upcoming flights from Gmail and your calendar and various other things you've told Google. It can tell you what restaurants are nearby and help your narrow down your preferences. If Google Search or Google Now is good at it, you can basically trust that the Google Assistant is good at it too.
Using Allo
Every time the Google Assistant responds, you get little suggested replies underneath it. These "suggestion chips" are shortcuts to manually typing out follow-up questions. Even though the Google Assistant is more flexible than Alexa or even Siri, it still takes some time to learn how to talk to it. The other thing that appears after every reply from the Assistant are little thumbs-up and -down emojis. These give feedback to the Assistant itself. If you give it a thumbs down, you can follow up with an explanation of what the bot got wrong. Google says it will use that feedback to improve the Assistant.
You can also "invoke" the Assistant in your actual conversations with friends. By typing "@google," you’re sending a query and the results will be displayed to everybody in the chat. Google has tried to give its Assistant some personality — albeit a rather insipid one. It tells bad jokes (aka the best kind of jokes). It plays "guess what this series of emoji represents" games with you. It cleverly refuses to tell you who to vote for.
