[BinaryIdiot]

So here's what I don't understand. Hangouts has been the main message app from Google that supports text and video chat. One of the biggest complaints about hangouts was not being able to use a phone number with it so you could essentially replace SMS with another app that's closer to an iMessage competitor.

Now we have two apps, Allo and Duo. Allo somehow addresses the phone number piece...but is broken out into a separate app and is only available on Mobile (so no web or desktop clients). Duo is basically the video portion of Hangouts.

Am I missing something? I mean the assistant stuff in Allo is neat and all but integration has been the key for a while to providing better usability and this just not only ignores that but introduces two new apps that somewhat sorta compete with Hangouts, its own product.

Why isn't this just one, single, awesome thing?

[vthallam]

I guess, they didn't go with Hangouts because it was basically built as extension of the web. May be they wanted to build a mobile focused messaging app from ground up which can compete with apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. It would have been if they integrated Allo and Duo into a single app though.