The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

I have lived back and forth between Europe and the USA over the last few years. Communication is always the most difficult part of the move. It's a reminder of how far off our tech is from the true ideal.

In Europe, everyone has WhatsApp. For a while, this was great! One app, one "to reply" list. A taste of what messaging could be.

I quickly found myself frustrated. WhatsApp relies on phone numbers, which muddies up my contacts with people who keep old numbers for WhatsApp but do SMS and calls on another. Then there was the time I switched my WhatsApp number and couldn't receive messages from anyone until I sent them a message first-- inadvertently pissing off a few friends of mine before I realized.

And now, being back in the States, Europeans are trying to call the number listed on WhatsApp, and getting voicemail, and I have to change my email signature to encourage them not to.

And my American colleages are sending me SMS and calling, but using my old number from last year. Verizon won't let me keep a SIM for more than a few months, so I have to pay the activation fee every year, and I can't use a different provider because I bought a Verizon branded phone (NEVER AGAIN) and I want LTE and Hotspots to work.

And my mom is used to iMessage, so she sends me horribly compressed photos via SMS, no matter how often I tell her to send elsewhere. Who knows how many she tried to send to my old number...

On top of all of this, I have active group chats going in WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, Discord and Facebook messenger on any given day. I always forget who said what, where. Digging up old addresses and contacts that people sent me is a nightmare.

I often think about sending a mass message telling everyone to switch to ONE_PERFECT_MESSAGING_APP. I thought that might be Allo (or is it Duo? Which one is chat?). Imagine my anger if I had actually tried that! Thankfully my euro tech skeptics talked me out of it-- "I will never switch to a Google app!", they said.

What can I do? I feel hopeless, trapped between tech Giants making economic decisions that hurt me, instead of working together to make our lives easier (like they claim at the beginning of this PR piece)

EDIT: I don't like whining, I like solving problems-- so I created a therapy group called OOMA - Only One Messaging App - and we are going to solve this humanitarian problem. Our discord is here https://discord.gg/CmdgUp

(Googler also, also unrelated product)

I felt like Allo was actually a really great product. Comparing it's UX and features to other messaging apps out there, I felt like it was one of the most polished (iMessage or FB Messenger being similar). From a product strategy POV, it felt like a product targeting Asia (specifically India, as it launched with Indian themed sticker packs), at least at launch, but that changed over time. Also, it's important to distinguish Allo from Hangouts from the account perspective. Allo is phone # tied, like WhatsApp/Telegram. So definitely trying to go after a different market segment. It just failed.

Duo continues to be awesome. Being a FaceTime competitor that is cross-platform is great. No account needed, just simply start a video chat from your address book (or from the App).

Hangouts is... something special. There are clearly reasons things happened the way they did. But I think it's good to see that Hangouts Chat/Meet will be open to consumers eventually.

Hangout was good but it feels like Google whiteanted this product in the hope people would head to Allo/Duo. While in reality they just pushed people away completely.

I find it amazing how these decisions are made... it seems like most people here could see the train wreck coming from this at the beginning. Are the descion makers that bad? Did no-one have the guts to discuss how bad these things looked or were they arrogant enought to feel they can fly above market sentiment... I always find it interesting how bad decisions are made in such seemingly obvious circumstances.

Does anyone think that now is Microsoft's best chance to revive Skype as a household name synonymous with chat and video calls? I doubt anyone would want to use any chat app from Google anymore, Facebook is getting really bad PR which could affect WhatsApp as well soon enough. Signal and Telegram are good alternatives but lack marketing muscle. Slack and Discord are mainly used for group chat in professional and gaming circles.

Skype was almost a genericized trademark meaning video call, that seems to have been taken over by Facetime to some extent. If Microsoft would make it easy to chat with friends and businesses from the same app, and threw some fresh paint on it, they might take some of the market back.

There’s a Googler in here who wrote a comment on this post: “I think it's good to see that Hangouts Chat/Meet will be open to consumers eventually.”

I just don’t know. I’m at a complete loss for words on how Google can screw this up so badly.

We actually use Hangouts every day for our business. I have been advocating a move to Slack.