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Google VP Nick Fox shares sneak peek of Allo for desktop

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In a Tweet this evening, Nick Fox, Google’s VP of Communications Products, shared an early look at Allo for the desktop. Although Allo had a decently strong start with over 5 million downloads in the first four days after launch, growth was quite slow after that. So slow that it took almost three months to reach 10 million downloads. Bringing Allo to the desktop might be Google’s best chance to increase user adoption…

Fox’s Tweet says “Still in early development, but coming to a desktop near you…” so there’s no telling how long it may be before we’ll see its arrival.

For now, Allo only works by signing in with a phone number on smartphones, but a web-based desktop version may suggest that the service could switch to utilizing your Google account for signing in. Hopefully, we’ll also see functionality come to tablets as well.

In the Tweet’s image, you’ll notice Google Assistant. While we haven’t had any word on if the company plans to bring Assistant to the desktop, this could be its first integration.

If you use Allo on your smartphone right now, you know that you can only have it signed into one device at a time. Additionally, if you ever switch devices, all of your chat data is deleted forever.

We’ll have to wait and see if Google decides to go for a cloud-based system for message and data storage for upcoming versions of the application or if they’ll adopt a system like WhatsApp and store data locally on the phone.

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