Google haven’t exactly been having things all their own way since they launched ‘Allo’. The messaging app hasn’t exactly been lighting up the app charts as users continue to use competitors such as WhatsApp and Messenger. Google had been hoping that ‘Allo’, with its intuitive messaging system that lets people react to videos and photos without typing a single letter, would gain a foothold in the competitive mobile messaging marketplace. So far, however, users haven’t downloaded ‘Allo’ in huge numbers so it appears that Google is trying a different tactic by launching the service on desktop.
Vice President of Communications at Google, Nick Fox, tweeted a screenshot of Allo for desktop but made sure to state that the project was still in the early stages of development. Believed to be a Chrome app, which means it’s not native to either Windows or Mac OS, Allo will support Google’s assistant bot. It will allow users to either chat directly to the bot or bring the bot into conversations with friends which means that when development is complete, it will mark the first time Google’s Assistant has been seen on the desktop.
News of the app making its way to desktop shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, Google has been trying to crack the chat app market for a long time and it appears that they have finally realised that if they are going to be successful, they have to make their app available on numerous devices. Until now, Allo has only been available on mobiles, meaning users were unable to sync their searches or chats with their desktop.
One question that wasn’t answered from the screenshot was how exactly the desktop version of Allo will work. It could operate similarly to WhatsApp which works by pulling all of its data from the mobile version of the app, or alternatively it could utilise the cloud and connect directly that way, which would make it similar to Google Hangouts. If Google intend for users to only be able to use Allo on one single mobile device at a time, then it’s likely to work like WhatsApp. In order for it to work like Google Hangouts, however, Google would have to be in the process of creating an infrastructure that would allow users to install Allo on numerous phones, tablets as well as Chromebooks. If the latter is the way Google are progressing with Allo, we can probably expect it to remain in development for quite a while yet.
