While several of us crawled in the past with chat servers such as Yahoo Messenger and Gtalk, the world currently sways with Facebook and its 1 Billion strong Whatsapp Messenger. After the world saw the rise of smartphone messaging as an alternative to SMS (Short Messaging Service), Whatsapp came to power like a boss. It soon became the app of choice and is now an accepted metonym for text messaging. With its parent company Facebook already sporting 1.5 billion users, this is going to be a tough nut for any competitor to chew. Although Google hasn’t really been a key player in the Mobile messaging market, it’s newly launched video calling app Duo is indeed very promising. Now, they have announced the launch of a brand new messaging app named ‘Allo’ that is said to be a new step forward in communications technology.Toppling Whatsapp is certainly a colossal challenge for anyone, but listed below are some ways how Allo can gain a lot of followers.
Uses End-to-End Encryption
End-to-End Encryption in chat is the new norm for the most trusted chat applications such as Whatsapp and will be present on the upcoming Allo. This is not only a big step in securing the user’s privacy but also keeps chat data hidden from the likes of internet providers and telecom agencies. Although this is nothing new, this will certainly place Allo among the trusted messaging apps alongside Facebook and Whatsapp messenger. Allo will feature the Open Whisper System Protocol that is also featured on Signal, another chat messaging app acclaimed for its security.
Better Privacy
Apart from the standard End-to-End Encryption, Google Allo claims to revolutionize user privacy by adding an incognito mode similar to Chrome. Apart from this, users can also set an expiry date for chats and prevent any unwanted data from cluttering your phone. Private notification is also a new feature that will allow you to send private notifications to people in a group chat allowing for richer conversations.
Smart Reply Options
Just like how the Google search results try to predict your keywords, similarly the Google machine learning technology will automatically suggest you quick replies for an ongoing conversation. It analyzes the user’s behaviour and their most frequently used replies and responses to determine smart replies, that will making messaging a much pleasant experience. You can also increase or decrease the size of a particular reply to give an impression of whispering or shouting.
Google Assistant
The addition of an A.I. chat assistant might scare some technophobics (bring it on skynet !), but the Google Assistant might prove to be the ace in the hole for the developers. This pulls out useful information from third party services that might make Allo the one stop app for all messaging on mobile devices. Although there have been earlier attempts of such assistant bots, but none of them have been considered to be as promising as the Google Assistant.
Facebook Ads Targeting Whatsapp Users Might Not Settle Well
Not a lot of people seem to care right now, but the news about Whatsapp sharing user data with Facebook for ad targeting might become an achilles’ heel. There is an opt-out option in place, but that surely isn’t very reassuring as most users do not know about the 30-day time limit. This has caused a lot of outrage, due to the fact that whatsapp users might now see ads. Not really a smart move Facebook!
The best and worst thing about technology is its ever-changing, ever-evolving nature. The arrival of new technology can sure make the whole world go crazy, as seen each time Apple announces an iPhone. Nevertheless, with each new piece of tech revealed, the older tech gets obsolete. Hence it is only a matter of time, when the existing applications such as whatsapp will be replaced by new ones rendering them obsolete.
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