Why Google's Allo messaging app is a big step backwards

A year ago, when Google began to unwind Google, it felt like a positive sign for the company's underperforming social efforts. After sinking years into building a product overstuffed with photos, communication tools, link-sharing, and discussions, Google began to shrink them into more manageable tools. The results were largely positive. Google Photos has become a monster with 200 million monthly users, the company said during its I/O keynote. And communities evolved into a more modern take on message boards, emerging last week as a new mobile app called Spaces.