Google Allo: Think twice before installing this bot-powered messaging app
Google’s all-new messaging app is now
publicly available. It is powerful, and also potentially dangerous. Here’s what
you need to know before diving in.
Back
in May this year at their I/O event, Google announced a
seemingly magical chat app that appeared to literally blow the competition
out of the water on features and capability. After all, it was shown to ‘learn’
your style of conversation, ‘know’ the intent of your chat, even recognize
features in photos you receive. Think of the possibilities--an artificially
intelligent app that offers smart suggestions of where to eat based on what
we’ve discussed, or tells exactly where a courier parcel is, or even recognize
the landmark in the photo a friend has just sent--all of it right in the chat
message window. That’s Google Allo.
Cool
as this sounds, there is one key aspect that needs to be understood--for the
app to function, the piece of AI that powers it--Google Assistant--needs to
have access to the contents of your chats. To all of your chats. The only way
it will actually ‘evolve’ its ability to make relevant, contextual and accurate
suggestions is if it is fed with a ton of text, image and voice data--all of
which we typically generate over the course of using a messaging client.
At
first, you’d baulk at the prospect of opening the contents of your chats to a
third party--Google, in this case--especially given that the other two popular
apps in this space, WhatsApp and iMessage, have pledged to always-on end-to-end
encryption. Here, all information exchanged between the two parties of a
messaging conversation is encrypted, where nobody--not even the service
provider or the cellular provider you are using--can view the contents of your
chats. Nobody but you and the receiving party will ever have access to the conversation.
In
the Google Allo world, all of your conversations are open to Google from the
get go--there is no end-to-end encryption enabled by default. NSA whistleblower
and privacy doyen Edward Snowden had
publicly denounced this app soon after it was unveiled for this very
reason. Today, he once again reiterated his stance in a series of Tweets after
Google Allo went live on the Play store.
Google
does however offer the ability to manually enable end-to-end encryption within
the app, along with being able to define a preset ‘lifespan’ for your messages
after which they get deleted from both your phone and the phone of the person
you are chatting with. Of course, by doing this the app effectively gets
neutered in its ability to provide all those smart suggestions and that
bot-powered sparkly experience. But changing this setting is something many
unsavvy users would not bother getting acquainted with, much less manually
doing.
So
the questions really boil down to: do I want to use all those cool new
intelligent chat features for a more convenient--albeit less private--chat
experience, or do I want simple and secure point-to-point communications just
like I’m already accustomed to with WhatsApp, iMessage et al?
The
answer is straightforward enough: if you already have a Gmail account, use
Google Maps to navigate, and perhaps get those scary-timely ‘it is now time to
leave for your flight’ cards in Google Now on your phone, you’ve already opened
your life to the data-hungry engine that is Google. Using Google Allo in all
its unfettered glory just adds another avenue for Google to learn more about
you and your life. (That’s right--given how much access their apps already have
to our data, Google knows more about what food we like, where we travel to, and
how much money we have than we could ever imagine. Scary but true!)
So
if you do really need an all-new chat experience powered by a smart virtual
assistant and don’t really mind having the contents of your messages being
accessible for things like seeing better ads and product suggestions across the
Google ecosystem, go right ahead and install Google Allo. If not, you’re most
likely better off staying with WhatsApp or iMessage because that’s where the
rest of your contacts already are.
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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