50 ms·

Allo was so unpolished compared to whatsapp/telegram att it was hilarious,you def drank the koolaid too much. every indian i met treated it with disdain.

kyrra 8y ago
I'd love to hear why you think it was unpolished. I've talked with a number of people (both Googler's and other tech people) that liked the product (at least where it was going). My problems with it were: * It used the "phone is the source of truth" like Whatsapp, but it didn't go with always-on encryption (so they could do Google assistant in it). * They didn't launch with a desktop web client, which it eventually got (and I really like it). * It didn't launch with any kind of backup/restore system, though it eventually got it (so you could move to new phones). Things I liked: * Encrypted chats (incognito mode) worked well and had expiring messages. * The Overall UX/UI for the mobile app and Desktop are (in my opinion) better than all the other messaging apps out there (except maybe iMessage). (Though I don't use any FB products.) * It was on iOS and Android, and had the same features on both.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  i don't remember now and it seems impossible to find an article with my list of complaints but: 1. feature parity wasn't there. i already have whatsapp,you're asking me to move. feature parity would be minimum requirement 2. it didn't auto discover people like whatsapp does(or atleast it didn't when i tried it initially), people needed to sign up for it adding friction to an already unpleasant process of getting people to switch 3. duo wasn't in allo and allo wasn't in duo. if there had been just one app it would have had a greater value prop(at the time) of chats with video chatting. instead there was a whole 'nother app to manage. once whatsapp announced voice calls(followed by video) getting anyone to "allo/duo" was absurd 4.i remember number porting was buggy in some way, just flat out didn't work for 2 days can't remember the rest but i remember something about the emojis bugging me(google implementation different from whatsapp) and being unable to send pdfs it needed to compete from day one not "find it's feet" gradually. i find this to be a problem with all google products really

kyrra 8y ago

I'd love to hear why you think it was unpolished. I've talked with a number of people (both Googler's and other tech people) that liked the product (at least where it was going). My problems with it were: * It used the "phone is the source of truth" like Whatsapp, but it didn't go with always-on encryption (so they could do Google assistant in it). * They didn't launch with a desktop web client, which it eventually got (and I really like it). * It didn't launch with any kind of backup/restore system, though it eventually got it (so you could move to new phones). Things I liked: * Encrypted chats (incognito mode) worked well and had expiring messages. * The Overall UX/UI for the mobile app and Desktop are (in my opinion) better than all the other messaging apps out there (except maybe iMessage). (Though I don't use any FB products.) * It was on iOS and Android, and had the same features on both.

kkarakk 8y ago
i don't remember now and it seems impossible to find an article with my list of complaints but: 1. feature parity wasn't there. i already have whatsapp,you're asking me to move. feature parity would be minimum requirement 2. it didn't auto discover people like whatsapp does(or atleast it didn't when i tried it initially), people needed to sign up for it adding friction to an already unpleasant process of getting people to switch 3. duo wasn't in allo and allo wasn't in duo. if there had been just one app it would have had a greater value prop(at the time) of chats with video chatting. instead there was a whole 'nother app to manage. once whatsapp announced voice calls(followed by video) getting anyone to "allo/duo" was absurd 4.i remember number porting was buggy in some way, just flat out didn't work for 2 days can't remember the rest but i remember something about the emojis bugging me(google implementation different from whatsapp) and being unable to send pdfs it needed to compete from day one not "find it's feet" gradually. i find this to be a problem with all google products really