Google turns 18 and celebrates by sneaking into your conversations

Google now has its very own WhatsApp-beater. It’s called Allo, and it comes a month after they released Duo, their video chat app. Allo was born into this world with an impossible mission: to break into a market dominated by titans like WhatsApp and Messenger, and their combined one billion users. But let’s be honest, although Allo is well weaponized with more than decent features

like group chats, the ability to draw, add text to photos, send stickers, etc., the task ahead is not going to be a walk in a park.

But Google hasn’t given up, it is not in the DNA of the Californian behemoth. And if your experience with Google+ and Hangouts left a bad taste in your mouth, worry not because this time, Google has pulled all the stops and given Allo a secret weapon: @Google – their famous virtual assistant which is based on their powerful search engine. @Google on Allo is present in all your conversations

to offer answers and search results and all you’ve got to do is ask. Fancy a four cheese pizza for dinner? Sure! Here’s the nearest pizza place, and here’s their website and phone number. Are you bored? Here’s a joke to entertain you.

So we think they’re ahead of the game in this aspect, but what about privacy?

In May, Google anticipated some criticism and promised they would not store the content of your conversations on their servers, and that conversations would be encrypted from end to end. But apparently, they decided to go back on that promise

and now, everything that you do on Allo, except when in incognito mode, will be recorded. If this matters to you, wipe all your message regularly or use incognito mode. The choice between convenience and privacy is yours to make.

• And Google is not sitting still. They also launched their new travel app,Google Trips, which aims to make travel easy. To achieve this, the appgathers everything you needto plan a trip – Bookings hotels, attractions, transportation, guides – in a single app. Of course, it’s not going to stop you from using Tripadvisor or Yelp yet, but variety is always useful.

• The kind of music you listen to says a lot about your personality. This is probably the reason why Tinder has matched itself with Spotify. So now, your potential matches can now see the type of music you listen to, in addition to the photos you have on Instagram. So if you want to make the best first impression, write your profile carefully, curate your Instagram pictures, and create amazing playlists on your Spotify account.

• But if you prefer to be alone at home, Netflix will always be with you.They made the news this week

  when they announced that over the next few years, Netflix will fill more than 50% of its catalog with their own content. Not because their own productions are better than others, but because they cost a lot less money. Looking at the goodies Netflix has brought to us so far, like Narcos and Stranger Things, we feel that they’ve well proven their ability to create amazing content. Will their productions stand the test of time? Only time will tell.

If you trust Bruce Schneier’s apocalyptic warning,”Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet”, then you might want to prepare for the end of the Internet as we know it. According to Schneier, cyberattacks so far, such as the one Yahoo suffered last Thursday

are only the prelude to something much bigger.

“It feels like a nation’s military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar,” writes Schneier.

Source: mail from softonic credits: Softonic