Less than three months after its English version was launched, Google's messaging app, named Allo, arrived in Brazil last Monday (5).
Unlike other chats, Allo uses artificial intelligence, allowing Google to interact in a conversation almost like a personal assistant, scheduling appointments, offering online information, plotting map routes, and playing YouTube videos. All without leaving the conversation.
The assistant is activated in the conversation when the "chatbot" function is activated, or whenever a message is initiated with @google. To participate in conversations, Allo extracts information from its own platform tools, such as the search engine and Maps, but first it needs to understand the conversation, hence the importance of the Portuguese version.
Brazil is only the third country to receive the app, which was first launched in the US and then in Germany. According to Google's vice president of communications, Nick Fox, Allo's arrival in Brazil, before its debut in most European countries, is part of the company's strategy, which has chosen to popularize its products in emerging markets, unlike its main competitors. Apple's assistant, Siri, gained its Portuguese version four years after its global launch, and Microsoft's assistant, Cortana, took more than two years.
"We knew Brazil would be a big market for us. But as soon as we launched, we saw that even without customization and improvements for Brazilian Portuguese, we already had many users in Brazil, which reinforced the importance of doing a good job.”, justifies Fox.
Google's biggest challenge in adapting the app for Brazil lies in the complexity of Portuguese. To interact in chats, Allo needs not only to translate conversations but also to understand the culture behind the language, allowing it to understand and contextualize typical Brazilian slang and names. This is only possible thanks to the artificial intelligence behind the device, which allows Allo to talk about soap operas, soccer, and even provide recipes for rice and beans.
