Google Announces Messenger Allo, Duo and Google Home at I/O 2016

It's been a while since 'Google I/O 2016' kicked off. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google inaugurated the event by showing of the impressive stats and accomplishments made by Google so far. The company has made great achievements in natural voice processing and have an edge over the technology to its rivals. It seems that Google engineers have been busy developing a new Google Assistant, on the similar lines of Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri, an app to converse with the user. The feature will be released on smart phones, automobiles, and Chrome OS devices soon.

Google also launched a spectacular device named 'Google Home'. The device which looks like any other portable speaker, has Wi-Fi-enabled 360 degree speakers, a power button, in-built microphone, and four LEDs to resonate with the choreography of dots in Google Now. You can communicate to any of your consumer device by just talking to this Google device. You may also use Google search, book tickets or get directions with real time traffic with the device. Available in custom colour variations, the device will be available to consumers later this year.


Google later announced two new apps - Allo and Duo.


Allo is Google's new messenger which really is a breakthrough in its ability to bind messaging with Artificial Intelligence. In terms of design and user experience, Allo is much similar to other messaging apps like WhatsApp or Messenger, but has a fresher look and seems to add the goodness of all of them. You can chat with anyone who is on your phonebook, just like WhatsApp. But what's amazing is the Whispering feature of Allo.

In the Allo app, the send button doubles as a slider through which you can change text size to either magnify or diminish the text, adding more detail to the modulation in a text message. Thus you can shout out by enlarging the text, or shrink to whisper. Another great feature that the app boasts of is that you can interact with Google just like you would do with a friend.

Simply head to #-Link-Snipped-# to book a restaurant table, find movie reviews, or ask scores of your favourite team! Allo can also suggest you replies on the basis of the messages or pictures send to you, by scanning and identifying the content in your data. The chat gives phenomenal results every time. You can also start an incognito chat, just like you would pull out an incognito window in Google Chrome. The incognito chat offers end-to-end encryption, private notification, option to delete the chat completely after a certain time, all optimised by the user.


Google also announced a new video chatting app named Duo - which lets you make video calls. What's special about the app is the feature which is called 'knock-knock'. This feature lets you see a preview, a video of the video caller, before you even start a call. This lets you decide if you really want to make a call. Both the apps will be available to Android and iOS users.