I’ve had mixed feelings on Google’s latest messaging apps, Duo and Allo, which were announced and elaborated on during this year’s Google I/O. At first I was pretty excited, at least for Allo, which initially seemed like it would be a decent iMessage competitor for Android. However, after further deliberation (with myself) I realized that the stars were already aligned for Google to have an iMessage competitor, Hangouts, and for whatever reason they just threw all of that away for a new messaging system. Why should I believe that this would turn out any differently than Hangouts, or the myriad of other Google products that were seemingly doing well and then squashed?

Still, while I harbored my doubts, I did want to try the apps out before making a final declaration. As it turned out, my initially negative view of Duo wasn’t completely warranted. If you can convince your friends to download and use it, Duo is actually a very nice, simple video messaging app. It does have some cons, and it’s not as feature-heavy as some may want their video messaging app to be, but it also has some advantages over other video messaging services as well. You can read more about my experience with Duo here.

After trying Duo out, it was time to wait for Allo. Although it took longer than I expected, Google finally released Allo to the public two days ago. Unlike my experience with Duo, my expectations for Allo have partially come true.

I hadn’t tried Allo at all before its public release two days ago, so I went into this version of the app not knowing much of anything about the changes that may have taken place between I/O and now. I was hoping that SMS support or a desktop version had been added, but neither of those things are really a part of Allo yet. While Allo serves as an SMS relay to people who aren’t using Allo, along with receiving your message, the receiver is also harassed with information regarding the fact that you sent your message from Allo. The receiver can actually send a text back through their normal text messaging app “for free”, but are encouraged to download Allo as well. This happened every time I sent a text using Allo.

I get that Google needs to advertise Allo because most people aren’t aware of its existence, but beyond that first “Hey, this person is using Allo, you should too!” message, it just becomes an annoyance and unappealing. I decided then that I would not message anybody else with Allo, nor would I feel comfortable suggesting it to anybody else yet.

So to sum it up so far, no official SMS nor desktop support for Allo yet. However, Allo isn’t completely useless. Before deciding to give Allo the axe, I decided to try out the Google Assistant feature. I’m glad I did, because the feature is actually pretty fun.

So far, the Assistant has handled my queries decently. It’s not so great with continuation of past conversations – you seem to need to be pretty precise each time you ask a question. But when you are precise in your queries, the responses are typically helpful… and sometimes a little too helpful.

I’ve been having a lot of fun using Google Assistant. Because of this, Allo stays for now. The Assistant aspect is good enough for me to keep it around, but I am still disappointed with the messaging aspect of the app. Granted, it’s an early release and there’s still time to improve Allo. I really hope that Google ends up taking Allo seriously, because it has some nice aspects to it already. I could see myself using Allo as a messaging service in the future if Google improves the right areas, but for now I think its best use is for the Google Assistant.