Google has launched Alo, its new chat app. Robert, can it take on Facebook? No shot, Andrew. it's not going to take on Facebook messenger. Of course not. Facebook has a monopoly on your friends. It's got a social network. Google tried to launch a social network itself, Google +. How did that go over? I choose to forget. Yeah, exactly. Not so well. Yeah. So good luck, Google, with a chat app. I don't see you taking on Facebook. About a billion people using it and Facebook Messenger. Yeah, I get it, but Google's been around a long time. It has gotten chat right in the past. Don't forget about Google Chat, the original G- chat the integration with Gmail and all that. It was heavily used at a certain time in history and it is still heavily used today but it clearly needs to be moved into the 21st century. Right and that's what aloe is all about it's mobile only It has a digital assistant integration which is all the rage right now, it'll add context automatically thanks to Google's knowledge base which is a little bit like Google now, and of course it's fun. I mean you can draw on pictures, you can send things femorally so that they expire, these are the things that people like Snapchat for But they're now in a Google service. What's not to love? Is fun gonna make people download this thing? I don't know. [ LAUGH ] There are so many chat apps out there right now, dozens. We mentioned a few of them, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Line, Telegram, Skype, Signal. And you send me messages from all of them. All of them, all of them. All of them. Why? Are you gonna answer me if I'm on Google? No. [ LAUGH ] I'll have another app to download and chat with you on. It's just not gonna happen. I don't see How they can get the real estate on people's smartphones now. That's asking a lot. Yeah, I can though. It's Google we're talking about here. They already have real estate on your smartphone. And if it's an Android smartphone they run the whole thing. Look, Google has a huge install base of users. But it has to get it right. You use Google services. I use Google services, Gmail, and Sheets, and Docs, and Drive, and all of these things, wouldn't it be nice to actually have a good chat integration. We see that in chat in Gmail, but Allo could be integrated really well and then like I mentioned, all those Android smartphones, biggest mobile operating system in the world. It's not that hard for Google to become a huge player much as apple does with imessage. Look here's the sticking point for me. It's the privacy angle. So although Google Aol does have an end to an encrypted messaging feature. It's called incognito mode you can boot it up separately. Just like chrome. No body can spy on whatever messages you're doing. However, the default mode does not have that. It logs and stores your chat messages on Google servers and as I reporter myself that's not something I'm necessarily interested in. And that's a fair point. For one show that had you at hello, come to fortune. com for more Tech Debate.

The Problem with Google’s New Messaging App, Allo