In a post on its official blog, Google laid out a simplified messaging strategy for the future. In order to offer customers “a simpler and more unified communications experience,” Google promised to support only five messaging apps going forward, down from its current suite of seven.
To cut down to five apps, Google will eventually shut down Hangouts and Google Allo, while Messages, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, Duo, and Google Voice would continue to be supported.
Google still has not gotten its Messaging act together, much to some users frustration, now the tech giant makes it official to discontinue its experimental Allo chat app. And will instead focus on Messages for well messaging, Duo for video calls, and Hangouts for team communications.
It’s not really a surprise that Allo will be discontinued as we haven’t seen an update for it in quite a while. There has been a whirlwind of rumors around Google’s messaging strategy over the past few days.
Hence the announcement mostly reiterates what we already assumed was true about the company. Google finally confirmed that Allo is going away, with the shutdown date set for the end of March 2019.
Google Hangouts is not shutting down, but the classic version is being replaced, and Google is not sharing when. All Hangouts users will be transitioned to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, just like enterprise users have been. In the meantime, Chat and Meet are being actively updated.
While the duo has nothing in change. It seems that unlike Allo, Duo has found a set of loyal users. Duo now works on Android phones, Android tablets, iPhones, iPads, Chromebooks, and Smart Displays. Today, the app gained the ability to send a video message.
As for Hangouts, there was a recent announcement that Hangouts Chats and Hangouts Meet, which is meant for G Suite customers, will eventually be available for existing Hangout users.
Hangouts as we know it will eventually cease to exist, although as to when that will happen is still up in the air.
It is announced, Allo will continue to work until March 2019 and you can now start exporting all your existing conversation histories.
They’ve provided step-by-step instructions on how to download it and messages will be stored in a CSV file while media attachments will be in a zip file.
So, to sum up, Android Messages and Google Duo for consumers, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet for the enterprise.
