Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

­PingWest / Jiang Hongchang

­in the news that Twitter will be acquired again recently, Google is still the rumored "potential buyer". My colleague Fan Junjie commented on moments, "I feel that Google has the demeanor of Alibaba in social affairs."

­in addition to investments and acquisitions, like Alibaba, Google itself has tried a lot of social products. The Verge recently joked that Google's strategy for messaging applications is simply "try everything".

­Google has recently released two more chat apps, one is Facetime-like video chat app Duo, and the other is even messaging app Allo.

­both apps are mobile-based and strive for brevity, and when registering and initiating chats, they even abandon their Google account and use the phone number as the only condition. However, Allo has received much more attention because of its integration with Google Assistant, a deep learning-based AI system, where robot assistants can help you book restaurants, search, provide automatic reply suggestions, and so on.

­after a few days of trial, my feeling is that Allo is an excellent chat application, but at the same time, it also faces competition from mature chat applications such as Wechat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and LINE, which have hundreds of millions of users, and intelligent voice assistants such as Siri and Cortana. In neither of these dimensions, Allo is good enough to prompt users to migrate from their usual chat software. So, I'm a little worried that Allo, like Alibaba's contacts, or Google's own Google+, may become another case of premature death with a golden spoon.

­Allo design

­Allo is designed to be extremely simple, with a chat message interface on the home page, a button in the lower right corner to view the address book to initiate a chat, and a navigation bar in the upper left corner to modify profile and settings.

­Allo registration is also simple, you can only register through your mobile number (Chinese mainland mobile number is supported), rather than entering a Google account. After successful registration, you can also bind your commonly used Google account to Allo. If you want to find a friend and start a chat, only if his cell phone number is saved in your mobile phone address book, even if he connects his Google account to Allo, you cannot find him by looking up his Gmail account.

­the chat interface is similar to many instant messaging applications. Allo also provides an interesting feature: whisper and Whisper Shout, when you type the text, hold down the send key and drag up, the text will grow larger, release and send; conversely, drag down and the text will become smaller. Through the change of text size, different emotions can be conveyed.

­you can also initiate a stealth chat in Allo, where Allo provides end-to-end encryption (data is always in ciphertext during transmission from source to destination), and you can set the message to "burn after reading". In stealth chat mode, messages will only be sent through the Google server and will not be saved on the server.

­Privacy protection is a feature highlighted by Allo at this year's Google Iamp O conference. At the time, Google promised that all information would be encrypted end-to-end, and that Google would not save messages. However, after the official release, Allo's privacy policy has changed. In non-invisible chat mode, Google stores chat messages by default unless users actively delete them.

­in this mode, although chat messages are also encrypted, Google's algorithm can use this data. The reason for Google is that the service of robot assistant Google Assistant can be improved by analyzing user data.

However, Google's approach was scoffed by Snowden. He described Allo as bait for citizens' privacy data set by Google and the US government, so his advice was "Don't use Allo."

Google Assistant of Intelligent Assistant in ­Allo

­Intelligent assistant is the most important feature of Allo. Also at this year's Google Iamp O conference, Google Assistant was solemnly launched as the first new product to appear. It will gradually replace Google Now as the brand of Google in personal intelligent assistants.

­Allo is one of the first products to use Google Assistant. After registration, Google Assistant appears by default on the chat page. In the chat interface, you can ask it to recommend nearby restaurants, set alarm clocks and timers, check email, push news, translate, book air tickets, weather forecasts, and so on.

One of the features of ­Google Assistant is that it can provide some more personalized services, rather than a simple "ask and answer". For example, when you ask it to recommend a nearby restaurant, it will ask you what flavor of food you like, get your preference and then recommend it.

­Allo also supports group chat. Google Assistant is also effective in group chat. You only need @ google to activate an intelligent assistant. Functionally, it is similar to that in private conversation. One difference is that when you ask Google Assistant to check your email and schedule during a group chat, it will remind you that these features cannot be used in a group chat for privacy reasons.

­Google Assistant can also play a role when you chat with a friend. In a typical scene, when a friend sends you a cute photo, Google Assitant will automatically recognize the photo and then provide reply suggestions, such as "so cute", "like", etc., you can directly click to choose a reply. According to Google, the reply suggestion will also be improved according to your personal habits to make it sound more like you.

­Google Assistant will not be available in private chat mode.

The limitations of ­Allo

­now that Allo's intelligent assistant only supports English, coupled with the reasons we all know and the dominance of Wechat in the Chinese chat app, it is destined to fail to make a difference in the Chinese market.

We need to pay attention to the opportunities in the European and American markets. I once interviewed Dan Grover, an American product manager who used to work for Wechat, and according to him, the most used "chat app" by Americans is actually texting (a big reason for this is that texting is free on a monthly basis in most mobile packages), and Allo is an app that wants to replace texting.

­however, unlike Apple's iMessage, Allo does not "hijack" text messages, and text messages on mobile phones are isolated from chat messages on Allo. It is hard to imagine that American users who are accustomed to texting will completely migrate to Allo. At the same time, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE and so on already have hundreds of millions of users, and they are all good enough in their respective usage scenarios, and they are also "several mountains" on Allo. For social software, usually you are where your social relationship chain is.

Nowadays, many foreign technology giants begin to regard bot as "next big thing". Through the open interface, Facebook Messenger already has a number of chat robots provided by third parties, such as weather, CNN, e-commerce shopping; Microsoft has also integrated Cortana into its own Skype to help users order food, buy things, track takeout and so on.

­Allo can be said to be Google's chatbot "answer paper". Due to the accumulation of its own technology and the high level of attention that AlphaGo has won over Lee se-dol, Google has become an authority on artificial intelligence. However, in Allo, Google Assitant does not show much advantage over the above chatbots.

­"are you smarter than Siri?" "Siri is the best Siri, and I'm trying to be the best Google Assistant."

­Dan Grover also offers another way of thinking: are chatbots really the future? In his view, the tech giants' understanding of chatbots is still in the "pseudo-materialization" stage of "making robots look like people", and for the need to order food, the experience of Wechat official account is much better than that of chatbots that look more likely.

­order pizza with Cortana intelligent assistant, press the button 73 times; use Wechat official account, 16 times is enough

Finally, it's hard to say whether Allo is another blow to Google's social dream, or an attempt to collect real data to improve Google Assistant. I just hope Allo can hold on a little longer before it is shut down.

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