Google Allo Update Brings Chat Backup, Link Previews, and More; Duo Hits 50 Million Downloads on Android

Google launched its Allo and Duo social applications last year and both of these applications have now seen interesting developments. While Google Allo is receiving useful and long-awaited new features with the latest update, Google Duo has reached an impressive milestone as the app has now been downloaded over 50 million times from Google Play store.

First talking about the Google Allo update, the search giant has started rolling out new features to the application including an option to backup and restore chats, incognito mode for group chats, and link previews will now be available in the app as well, as per the tweet by Amit Fulay, head of product for the chat application.

The update is already available and can be downloaded from both Google Play and App Store. While Incognito mode for group chats has been added to both versions of the app, the chat backup option and the link preview features will only be available to Android users as of now.

With this update, users will be able to backup their chats on to Google Drive and can restore them easily. "With incognito mode in Allo group chats (involving more than two participants) all messages are end-to-end encrypted. Also no incoming message notifications will be displayed on the lock screen. Enabling greater control over your message privacy, you can now set the time limit for how long a message will remain on your phone and your contacts' phones (for example 30 seconds, 1 day, etc.)," the company said in a release announcing the new Google Allo features.

The newly introduced features are likely to improve the utility of the app considerably and might bring it up to the level of some of its competitors.

Moving on to the video-calling application Google Duo, it seems like Duo has outperformed its text-based sibling app as it has now registered more than 50 million downloads on Google Play store. Before you jump to any conclusions, we would like to remind you that the number of downloads don't necessarily reflect the number of monthly active users of the app. Although, this is a major achievement for the app as both Google Allo and Google Duo were struggling on the app charts in comparison to some of the veteran apps that have been available for several years now.

Part of Google Duo's success, in comparison with Google Allo, can be attributed to the fact that it didn't have seasoned competitors like Whatsapp like in the case of Allo. While Whatsapp and other major media platforms do offer video-calling features now, they are still primarily based on text-messaging. This is possibly why Google's Duo video-calling app might have struck a chord with users due its sheer simplicity and dedicated video-calling functionality.