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Google is shutting down its Allo messaging app for good

Google Allo launch
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Another Google messaging app is about to bite the dust — this time, it's Google Allo. 

As first reported by 9to5Google, the search giant's "smart" messaging app — which came equipped with Google Assistant — will be shutting down soon. 

Google confirmed that it would shut down Allo in a blog post on Wednesday, saying the app will continue to work through March 2019. 

Read more: Google is surprisingly bad at building messaging apps, but there are 4 reasons its plans to replace texting may work

Allo was announced at the company's developer conference in May 2016, and after lackluster adoption, the company said in April 2018 it would be "pausing investment" on the app. 

"The product as a whole has not achieved the level of traction that we’d hoped for,” Anil Sabharwal, vice president of product at Google, told The Verge at the time. 

The decision to shutter Allo makes strategic sense, since the company announced — also in April 2018 — that it was working on an initiative known as Google Chat. Google Chat will be similar to SMS and Apple's iMessage, creating a new universal standard for text messaging for Android users known as rich communication services (or RCS). 

Still, it's hard to ignore the difficulties Google has had launching a consumer messaging app throughout the history of the company. Once Google confirms the shutdown of Allo, it will join Google Buzz, Google Wave, and Gchat — technically called Google Talk — in the chat app graveyard. 

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Nick Bastone is a former tech reporter at Business Insider, based in San Francisco. He reported on Google/Alphabet and various tech news. Nick previously covered social media and politics for Inside.com. Before Inside, he was the digital editor for a Bay Area publication called The Six Fifty. Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (209) 730-3387 using a non-work phone, Telegram at nickbastone, or Twitter DM at @nickbastone. (PR pitches by email only, please.)