5 ms·

The feature is technically interesting, but I don't care about Allo. There are enough silly messaging apps out there, evolving in their own silos. I miss the da

The feature is technically interesting, but I don't care about Allo. There are enough silly messaging apps out there, evolving in their own silos. I miss the days of the XMPP protocol.

spiderfarmer 9y ago
I have always trouble remembering where a message came in. I have SMS / iMessage, Messenger, Whatsapp, 5 e-mail accounts and a Forum Inbox to worry about. And since you can't exactly flag messages as 'to do' I have to answer immediately or risk forgetting to reply. I hate that.
- mholmes680 9y ago
  Ditto this, on android. I have Messages, which i think is Google's... and i only downloaded it because the apps from Samsung, Verizon, and Facebook went to war in January (on my phone at least) and somehow I ended up getting texts in either the samsung app or verizon but never both, but group conversations in facebook messenger, but only the verizon app would actually allow picture messages to be viewable if i sent them to my mother. I also have Allo, because a (<-- not plural) coworker and I were curious about it. I think it solved that they didn't have facebook but did have apple, or maybe not i don't know. I also downloaded Duo and haven't opened it since, and I had hangouts, but i'm so very angry that Google screwed that up yet again. I have zero confidence in Google products fulfilling any of my needs completely ever again, and I really used to be the Google-champion of my friends... sigh.
  - spiderfarmer 9y ago
    Yeah, Google's been messing up messaging ever since Google Wave.
- mifeng 9y ago
  Me too. On my Pixel, messages will randomly appear either in: * Allo * Hangouts * Messenger (Android) * Messenger (Facebook) * WhatsApp It's like SMS-Roulette.
  - visarga 9y ago
    A possible solution would be to run all third party apps in containers and use computer vision (deep learning) to collect messages and notifications from their screens into a single place, if they don't want to cooperate officially. I don't know the legal implications though. Another app that should run into a container and be post-processed by computer vision is the web browser. We need to contain the browser itself (more privacy) and keep the pesky ads out of our eyes in a way that is impossible to hack by clever scripting or ad-block detection. On the next round, ad publishers would have to create adversarial ads that fool the classifier which would be a whole lot more difficult.
    - wcummings 9y ago
      I just tell everyone to email me. I have one email address. Everyone uses email. Problem solved.
dheera 9y ago
Me too. I do not know any of my friends who are using Allo. Why didn't Google roll out this feature within Hangouts?
- kmicklas 9y ago
  Google has 12354697024785902789027345238907423 messaging apps and no one has any idea why.
- pgodzin 9y ago
  Hangouts is now meant to be intended for enterprise use while Allo is the consumer-focused messaging app
  - deong 9y ago
    A consumer-focused messaging app. There's also Duo for video calls and "Messenger" for SMS (on Android). There's also the older thing called "Messenger" that's still running on all those devices that no one ever updated. On the desktop/browser, I guess there isn't a consumer-focused messaging app anymore. Unless I'm missing something obvious, Google apparently ceded that ground to others. I'm beginning to realize why Allo is as goofy as it is. It's not actually a messaging app. It's a machine learning playground app with a feature to send stuff to other people occasionally. Allo makes more sense as a concept if you look at it that way, though as a product, that's a bonkers idea that basically no one needs. Hence the non-existent user base.
    - technofiend 9y ago
      App fatigue is real... when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport. That Google has several apps which compete and conflict with each other is absurd. The fact they keep migrating functionality in and out of them is moreso. Just pick a winner and be done with it. There's not really a competitive advantage to splitting your ecosystem into 5 different communication apps, google, there's really not.
btczeus 9y ago
XMPP is alive: Try Conversations for Android

The feature is technically interesting, but I don't care about Allo. There are enough silly messaging apps out there, evolving in their own silos. I miss the days of the XMPP protocol.

spiderfarmer 9y ago

I have always trouble remembering where a message came in. I have SMS / iMessage, Messenger, Whatsapp, 5 e-mail accounts and a Forum Inbox to worry about. And since you can't exactly flag messages as 'to do' I have to answer immediately or risk forgetting to reply. I hate that.

mholmes680 9y ago
Ditto this, on android. I have Messages, which i think is Google's... and i only downloaded it because the apps from Samsung, Verizon, and Facebook went to war in January (on my phone at least) and somehow I ended up getting texts in either the samsung app or verizon but never both, but group conversations in facebook messenger, but only the verizon app would actually allow picture messages to be viewable if i sent them to my mother. I also have Allo, because a (<-- not plural) coworker and I were curious about it. I think it solved that they didn't have facebook but did have apple, or maybe not i don't know. I also downloaded Duo and haven't opened it since, and I had hangouts, but i'm so very angry that Google screwed that up yet again. I have zero confidence in Google products fulfilling any of my needs completely ever again, and I really used to be the Google-champion of my friends... sigh.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  Yeah, Google's been messing up messaging ever since Google Wave.
mifeng 9y ago
Me too. On my Pixel, messages will randomly appear either in: * Allo * Hangouts * Messenger (Android) * Messenger (Facebook) * WhatsApp It's like SMS-Roulette.
- visarga 9y ago
  A possible solution would be to run all third party apps in containers and use computer vision (deep learning) to collect messages and notifications from their screens into a single place, if they don't want to cooperate officially. I don't know the legal implications though. Another app that should run into a container and be post-processed by computer vision is the web browser. We need to contain the browser itself (more privacy) and keep the pesky ads out of our eyes in a way that is impossible to hack by clever scripting or ad-block detection. On the next round, ad publishers would have to create adversarial ads that fool the classifier which would be a whole lot more difficult.
  - wcummings 9y ago
    I just tell everyone to email me. I have one email address. Everyone uses email. Problem solved.

dheera 9y ago

Me too. I do not know any of my friends who are using Allo. Why didn't Google roll out this feature within Hangouts?

kmicklas 9y ago
Google has 12354697024785902789027345238907423 messaging apps and no one has any idea why.
pgodzin 9y ago
Hangouts is now meant to be intended for enterprise use while Allo is the consumer-focused messaging app
- deong 9y ago
  A consumer-focused messaging app. There's also Duo for video calls and "Messenger" for SMS (on Android). There's also the older thing called "Messenger" that's still running on all those devices that no one ever updated. On the desktop/browser, I guess there isn't a consumer-focused messaging app anymore. Unless I'm missing something obvious, Google apparently ceded that ground to others. I'm beginning to realize why Allo is as goofy as it is. It's not actually a messaging app. It's a machine learning playground app with a feature to send stuff to other people occasionally. Allo makes more sense as a concept if you look at it that way, though as a product, that's a bonkers idea that basically no one needs. Hence the non-existent user base.
  - technofiend 9y ago
    App fatigue is real... when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport. That Google has several apps which compete and conflict with each other is absurd. The fact they keep migrating functionality in and out of them is moreso. Just pick a winner and be done with it. There's not really a competitive advantage to splitting your ecosystem into 5 different communication apps, google, there's really not.

btczeus 9y ago

XMPP is alive: Try Conversations for Android