Tech giant Google seems to have failed in launching its own messaging service. The company has decided to can its venture Allo by March 2019. This has been conveyed through an official blogpost by the company and those users who wish to export their chat history will be able to do so till then.
According to a report in TechCrunch, the move is not entirely surprising, given further investments in the app was already held back since April.
Allo was launched in September 2016, and at the point, was touted to take on WhatsApp, though it entered the fray very late.
It surprises many observers that with such a large base of Android users that Google has, it has not been able to develop and grow a steady messaging platform like the iMessage that Apple could succeed in developing or the Facebook Messenger. Of course, Facebook-owned WhatsApp is in an entirely different league.
It is not as if Google has not tried either. There was GChat, then came Buzz and later Wave, though with different platforms. Google Plus was another platform that was shut down.
But all is not lost, since Google’s Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL will run RCS chat from December 6, being launched by Verizon. Obviously, the new chat service will be limited to those on Verizon connections in the US and elsewhere, and owned by Google, but Google’s presence through its hardware will definitely be felt by the users.
Also, Google is rebranding its Google Hangouts as Google Hangouts Chat, meant for enterprise users, and then there is the video conferencing solution Meet, again, to facilitate organisations holding meetings across different venues; both will be made available soon.
TechCrunch notes that while RCS chat is different from Hangouts, the rebranded Hangouts for enterprises will look very similar to Slack.