> Allo was trash from the beginning (why did it exist at all?) Allo, like Tez, which is now Google Pay, was targeting the Indian market considerably by way of

> Allo was trash from the beginning (why did it exist at all?) Allo, like Tez, which is now Google Pay, was targeting the Indian market considerably by way of using phone numbers for identity, instead of the Google Account infrastructure that already existed. The lure was that it was supposed to be easier to setup and already had a social graph. I believe Allo and Duo were supposed to be complementary and fight against WhatsApp dominance. Tez “won” only because they were giving out cash. Allo obviously never did that. But that’s why it wasn’t integrated into the rest of the ecosystem: it was a Google product but not tied to your account to try to fight against WhatsApp, et al., which left it on its own island, which didn’t work very well.