If you missed the Google I/O keynote earlier today, the title makes it sound like this about some edgy celebrity couple whose marriage is on the rocks, so allow me to explain. There were a lot of great announcements during the keynote, but one of the biggest was about Allo and Duo, two apps that are designed to innovate both messaging and video calling.

I can see the appeal that Google is going for with these apps. I don't think that the features they introduced are bad. In fact, I think they're quite good. Allo’s ability to integrate the new Google Assistant service into conversations is pretty neat. You can even text Google Assistant by itself, and essentially have a conversation with Google. Who needs friends when you have Google? The app also allows you to make text bigger and smaller so that you don't always have to use caps in order to emphasize something.

It all sounds pretty good on paper, but then things started to go downhill for me.

Another feature of Allo is that it can generate smart replies for you – basically the next level of autocorrect. Allo can generate a few reply options to a received message. These replies not only sound normal in conversation, but they can also make use of emojis (hopefully appropriately). I suppose the feature might be handy when you're in a bind and can't write out a reply, but it just doesn't sound like a feature that most people would really be interested in using very often, if at all. Smartphones may have made me lazy in a lot of ways, but I can still think of my own responses.

The other issue I see doesn't come from Allo at all. The issue stems from the fact that Duo, the other app introduced alongside Allo, is a completely separate app just for video calls. I imagine there was a good reason for this separation, likely due to the fact that Duo allegedly works very well even when there's a weak data signal. But I think people have grown to expect that messaging apps should be all-inclusive, and if you're going to include video calling then it should all be bundled with one app.

And then there's Knock Knock, the feature that allows you to creep on whoever’s calling you before you decide answer. This was implemented so you could mentally prepare yourself for what's coming by visually assessing the situation, but I was put off by it. Probably because I'm not a big fan of being watched by people I can't see. My mind immediately went to worst case scenarios. Trying to make a call to somebody that I know is watching me but hasn’t yet answered just sounds like an anxiety nightmare in the making. And on the receiving end of the call, I just can't imagine it always being use as innocently as Google may have envisioned.

And then there's the biggest obstacle to overcome, which is getting people to sign up with these apps in the first place. I don't know how Hangouts ended up working for you guys, but most of my friends wouldn't use it, so I gave up on it and just went back to my native SMS app. Although Allo and Duo use your phone number to create an account, you still have to create an account – and given how many messaging systems already exist, I just can't see people being super jazzed about yet another one on the market.

I could definitely be wrong here. Maybe Allo and Duo are separate apps, but hopefully Allo has a way for users to easily access Duo from the Allo app and vise versa. That would make a big difference, because it would at least give off the impression that the two aren’t as fragmented as they sound. And maybe people will be more excited about Google Assistant and enlarging/minimizing text than I predict they will be.

I can't help but be a little disappointed, though. Given that I'm currently in the middle of a complete switch to Android myself, when they announced that they were working on a new messaging app I couldn't help but hope they meant a real iMessage competitor. But with no mention of SMS integration or desktop support, it's clear that an iMessage competitor was not Google’s intention – or if it was, they completely missed the mark.

Readers, what are your thoughts on Allo and Duo? Are the innovative features enough to convince you to give it a try once it's released, or will you stick to other alternatives? Let us know in the comments below!