Allo and Duo are still a part of Google’s confusing messaging situation. It’s tough to tell if many of you use either of them. Since they are Google products, though, we’ve spent plenty of hours talking about the ways they have evolved and where Google has tried to improve upon their original feature sets. Things may change some on all of those fronts going forward, as the head of product for Allo and Duo, Amit Fulay, has left the company and moved over to Facebook.
I’m not saying that Allo and Duo are now in limbo with Fulay gone. By all means, Google will just put someone else in charge of these two offerings. The point is, that leadership change often means change in direction or focus. Maybe this is the change we need to finally get SMS or multi-device support on Allo? Maybe we’ll get that Allo-Duo mash-up that continues to avoid us. Or maybe nothing will change and we’ll continue complaining about having to use old, broken Hangouts.
I don’t know, but there is now a change at the top of two of Google’s 257 different messaging apps and that could mean a fresh start to apps some of us would love to use, yet can’t find enough reasons to make the switch to.