March 12, 2019, marked the day Google pulled the plug on Allo. The struggling instant messaging app the search engine giant had hoped would topple the likes of WhatsApp and WeChat. Just liked it had hoped Google Plus would outdo Facebook.
Google first announced plans to shut down Allo in December last year. This month, there was a banner on the official Allo website that confirmed March 12 as the D-Day. It also gave instructions to uses to start backing up their chat history and start waving goodbye to yet another failed attempt by Google at providing chat service.
RCS the successor of Allo
Allo might be over and done with, but there is still some resemblance of it in Google’s Android Messages. A next-generation messaging service that Google hopes will replace the traditional SMS and usher in the era of RCS.
However, for RCS to take off, Google needs telecommunication service providers around the world to upgrade to new infrastructure that supports the service. Something that makes widespread adoption of RCS and the dropping of SMS an expensive and tedious process. Though in America, few carriers including Verizon and Google Fi have begun rolling out RCS support int their networks.
