Google Announces Allo, Duo, Stable Android N Preview, Instant Apps

Also at the conference, Google announced Allo, a new smart messaging app, and Duo, a high-definition video chat app for Android and iOS devices. TechCrunch reports: Why the decision to launch two separate apps? A couple of reasons, it seems. The first is to keep the experiences simple and lightweight; and the second: to do something a little different from the rest of the pack. Facebook, for example, has supercharged Messenger with smart bots, as well as voice and video calling and more on top of its basic text messaging service. Allo leverages Google's assistant bot to prompt interesting and relevant responses to texts. Duo is a one-to-one video chatting app with a number of interesting features including "Knock Knock" which lets you see the real-time video of the person calling you.
Google has also released the third preview of Android N. The company says that it is now safe enough to be used on your primary smartphone and tablet. The new update comes with a feature called "Seamless Updates" which will install system updates in the background.
The company also announced Instant Apps, a feature that will allow users to tap an Instant App URL, and run the app without installing it. Clicking on Instant App URL, Google says, only gleans the parts of the app that you need for a specific purpose. The feature will work on all phones running Android 4.2 or newer version, and will be available starting later this year.

Comments

Instant APPS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no LUDDITE FIRST POST this is a modern APPER APPING INSTANT APPP!

Apps!

Re:Instant APPS

[mrchaotica]

Oh shit, the troll is on-topic! Is this a sign of the End Times?

Re: Instant APPS

[WarJolt]

Only if the on-topic troll is modded insightful.

And from the What-Can-Possibly-Go-Wrong Dept....

[halfEvilTech]

Google is opening up the naming suggestions for Android N to the internet.

hopefully no one submits Namely McNameFace

MORE apps?!

[schitso]

Alright, I'm a Google fanboy, so I typically give them the benefit of the doubt, but seriously? What happened to Hangouts being their unified messaging app??

Re:MORE apps?!

[geek]

Google jumped the shark a couple years ago. They are at peak Google right now but its fading as people are realizing just how intrusive and crappy their stuff is. Gmail and search are their two standout products, everything else is "meh" and often done better by others. Plus Google as a company seems to have ADHD as they simply can't focus on anything at all. It's so childish watching them flail around like they do playing with "cool" stuff and never marketing any of it, promoting any of it, selling any of it. As a company they just suck on so many levels its frightening.

Re:MORE apps?!

[H3lldr0p]

My guess? Internal politics and fadishness rule the day behind the scenes.

Part of the problem is the branding of Google and people looking to the company as being the premiere purveyor of the latest and greatest. That means they redesign the wheel every few years in order to keep that mystique going as the longer term stuff simmers until its ready.

Re: MORE apps?!

[WarJolt]

Google has a hard time focusing on stable APIs. I love their Android api, their chrome api and app engine api. Their NDK is even usable. I hate the tools they build around these. Trying to chase their next drastic change to the dev environment or their new domain specific language you need to learn just to build your shit is maddening.

Amazon is builds stuff to serve their customers development. Google builds stuff to fuel their own interests. Sometimes those things turn out to be useful, but then they go changing shit on you.

Re:MORE apps?!

[MightyYar]

I largely agree, but add some more products to the "good" list: Android is good and has improved over time. YouTube, for all it's warts, is still the best of the video sharing sites (and a modern miracle when doing appliance repair). Waze is my favorite commuting app - the real-time traffic and rerouting works really well. Google Voice is getting long in the tooth, but still offers some killer features, very good international prices, and free US calling. Google's cloud/hosting/whatever is pretty good - I rented some time for some heavy computation and found it to be at least as nice as the AWS offerings. And finally, I actually like Keep.

Re:MORE apps?!

[msauve]

"add some more products to the "good" list: Android... YouTube ... Waze"

None of which were created by Google.

Re:MORE apps?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, I'm a Google fanboy, so I typically give them the benefit of the doubt, but seriously? What happened to Hangouts being their unified messaging app??

According to a friend on the relevant team, too many users found it confusing, and couldn't tell whether they were sending SMS or Hangouts messages. I think the idea was to build a platform that would "just deliver the message, I don't care how", but there too many case in which people actually *did* care how it was delivered, but didn't feel like they knew what was going to happen.

Bottom line: user studies showed that most people preferred separate apps for SMS and Hangouts messaging.

I prefer the unified app myself, and I still have Hangouts set to be my SMS app. My kids all prefer separate apps, though. I think this is a power user vs average user difference, and Google focuses primarily on the average user.

Re: MORE apps?!

[jareth-0205]

Yeah, they are very inconsistent with their inconsistencies. I think the core Android API is pretty good at remaining stable and backwards compatible, but the periphery APIs in like GCM or Payments are completely different every time I have to implement them, they change about once per year. It's very frustrating to have to learn this stuff again every time I do it.

That's a GREAT idea, I love starting over!

[Overzeetop]

A smart messaging app - thank goodness! I've been waiting for forever to get another messaging app. I mean sure, there's Google Hangouts. And Google Messenger. But I keep feeling like they could do a better job, and what better way to fix the half-assed messaging platforms they've done in the past than just kick them to the curb and start over from scratch. In fact, I'm already excited about the messaging platform that that's going to be super-awesome NEXT year when they abandon Allo because we all realize that, actually, it pretty much sucks.

And let's hope they do better with Duo than than they did with Voice - because...oh, who am I kidding. Whatever the write after they abandon Dou in a half-finshed state is going to be super-cool, too!

God, I'm just SO excited about all the new apps from Google!!

Already cancelled

[rainwalker]

Just save yourself some disappointment and assume they've already been cancelled. You'd have to be a blinding idiot to start using any new Google app, especially a chat app. Like always, they'll get about 75% completed, then, like a small toddler, will get bored and wander off in search of the next shiny, while the app bitrots until someone finally notices and kills it.

Hangouts?

[multi io]

So they're not upgrading but replacing Hangouts with not one but two new apps. I'm sure there's a brilliant strategic move hidden in there somewhere that I just fail to see.

Re:Hangouts?

[MightyYar]

Throw enough shit at the wall, and not only will some of it stick, but there is a non-zero probability that it might look like a piece of art.

O RLY?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Google has also released the third preview of Android N. The company says that it is now safe enough to be used on your primary smartphone and tablet. The new update comes with a feature called "Seamless Updates" which will install system updates in the background.

Oh yeah? Have they finally made it so these updates don't require the carrier's permission to install?

Re:O RLY?

[wbr1]

This is not what you are thinking. One on nexus devices (the only ones with N preview) carrier or manufacturer permission is not needed. However an OTA OS update uses the devices recovery partition to install the update. If you have flashed a custom recovery like me then you cannot use OTA updates, you have to manually flash.

So, hopefully this means less intrusive and easier updates to the OS. Once N is released to manufacturers and carriers, it is still up to them as to whether to push an update. Via either method.

This is why I only buy nexus devices now. There are too many orphaned devices with functional, more than sufficient hardware.

Re:O RLY?

[shawn2772]

No, Google doesn't have any control over that.

Isn't Google holding the source code?

No, actually.

Google develops the base system, but OEMs modify the source -- sometimes heavily -- before they build and ship it, and they do not give Google a copy of the source of the code they ship. In general, Google has no ability to build system images for non-Nexus/Pixel devices.

In addition there are lots of firmware components that Google doesn't have any visibility into at all. For example, I work on the hardware-backed keystore, which requires a bit of firmware that runs in a trusted execution environment (e.g. ARM TrustZone). I defined the interface (the Hardware Abstraction Layer, or HAL) and I wrote the reference implementation of that HAL, which is actually used on a small number of devices that ship with the Google-provided TEE. But the vast majority of devices use an implementation of the HAL from another provider. Qualcomm, Trustonic, nVidia and Intel all write their own versions, and those are just the ones I know about. There may be others. I have no visibility into their code, and sometimes changes I make in the keystore system daemon or at the framework level are incompatible with their implementations. In an ideal world, the HAL should be so tightly-specified, and the compliance test suite so thorough, that I can have confidence that their implementations work exactly the same as the reference implementation. In reality, stuff is complicated, there are corner cases and subtle misunderstandings that no one foresaw. And don't forget about OEM changes.

So, per-device testing of the final per-device build is absolutely essential to have any kind of stability. Which means that OEMs have to do it. And carriers often don't trust that OEMs have done it adequately, so they insist on doing their own testing as well.

I should also point out that many of the other firmware components (bluetooth, wifi, camera, baseband, etc.) have dozens of implementations, not just a few like mine.

All of this is both the greatest strength and, IMO, the greatest weakness of the Android ecosystem. It's a strength because there is power in diversity, ability to hit more market niches at more price points and meet more users' needs. It's a weakness because the diversity means there's a lot more work to be done to test and validate changes, and because designing for an open ecosystem is a lot harder than for a closed one. Sometimes I think I should go work for Apple because my life would be much easier.

OTOH, if I worked for Apple, I'd probably be swarmed by lawyers for writing a post like this one, among other things I dislike about Apple's culture. Also, if I worked for Apple my work would have much less impact on the world.

For the Love of God...

[Stormy Dragon]

Will someone PLEASE come up with an interoperable chat protocol, because I'm getting sick of every single person I need to communicate with wanting me to use yet another messaging app that no one else I know uses.

Re:For the Love of God...

[mrchaotica]

We have that; it's called XMPP. Google Talk even used to support it, before the functionality was removed for "let's be evil" reasons.

Re:For the Love of God...

[mrchaotica]

Obligatory XKCD.

XMPP already exists. Coming up with something else would be actively harmful.

Re:Did I miss something?

[ADRA]

The only valuable feature for the future or humanity:

Text from Joe: Yo dude, what's up man, lets hang out.
{system: no vibrate/ring/anything}
Auto-Text: I'm in a frigging movie right now, don't disturb me because I don't want to annoy the hundred people behind me.

Do they feature end to end encryption?

[BitterOak]

I'd be curious to know how secure these apps are. I'm looking for a good messaging system and video chat system, but I don't want to move to something new unless I know my conversations are secured and chats aren't stored on some server somewhere. What kind of encryption do these apps feature?

Re:Did I miss something?

[jcfandino]

The only valuable feature for the future or humanity:

Text from Joe: Yo dude, what's up man, lets hang out. {system: no vibrate/ring/anything} Auto-Text: I'm in a frigging movie right now, don't disturb me because I don't want to annoy the hundred people behind me.

What's the advantage over this?:

Text from Joe: Yo dude, what's up man, lets hang out.

{system: no vibrate/ring/anything}

Me (2 hours later): I was in a frigging movie before, I didn't answered then because I didn't want to annoy the hundred people behind me.