Google Hangouts is now an enterprise app, Duo and Allo to compete for consumer space
The announcement of chat apps Duo and Allo at Google I/O was a confusing one. Google, after all, already had reasonable success with…
The announcement of chat apps Duo and Allo at Google I/O was a confusing one. Google, after all, already had reasonable success with Hangouts, a chat app which did both video and text chat in the single interface.
But now, a few months later, Google’s plan for Hangouts, Duo and Allo is a little bit clearer.
From Engadget:
Google’s VP of communication products, Nick Fox, was willing to talk about that when he gave me an early demo of Duo last week.
[…]
“Because Hangouts is built on a Google account, because it’s deeply integrated with Google apps, the Apps suite [things like Drive, Docs, etc.], Gmail, Calendar and so on, it’s seen much more success in the enterprise,” Fox told me. “It will increasingly focus on that kind of group collaboration enterprise productivity space.”
In the grand scheme of things, Google is still recovering from the slow, painful death of Google+, a profile system which hoped to give Google’s productivity products a social edge, while also attempting to compete with Facebook.
But while Google+ failed in the consumer space, the platform, and more specifically its user profile system, works well with Google Apps like Gmail, Google Docs, and Hangouts. My workplace uses Hangouts religiously.
For consumers though the account system is a barrier to entry. You need to make a Google+ profile and it’s not as simple as WhatsApp.
By comparison both Duo and Allo basically don’t give a shit about your Google account or your Google+ friends. You connect with other users based on their phone numbers, not Google+ friends. And broadly speaking that’s probably an improvement.
Though this isn’t necessarily a fix for Google’s confusing chat strategy. Hangouts will still be a product, even for consumer accounts. And if you send a chat message through Hangouts in Gmail it won’t come through the Allo app. In fact, for now, Allo and Duo are only available on mobile. So if you see someone’s name in your Gmail chat list it’ll be pointing to Hangouts, not Allo or Duo.
It’s confusing enough to write about it, let alone to use, but maybe Google has a grander plan for the apps. Maybe a desktop component?
