Google Adds a Meme Search Feature to Allo

Allo is officially aimed at normies

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It’s fair to call Google’s multiple forays into the mobile messaging space confusing — and that’s putting it lightly. Even with its faults, many were happy with Hangouts and just wanted to see it optimized to handle large group chats without stutters. Google felt otherwise, and has since transitioned Hangouts to an “enterprise service”, so that they can focus on Allo and Duo instead. We’ve seen the Allo team adding a ton of new features here and there, but the latest change lets you search for memes online and embed them into a chat. Yes, really.

The community at large seems rather split when it comes to Allo. As mentioned, there are many who would rather see Google put this kind of effort into Hangouts. Instead, they actually removed features from Hangouts while using Allo as their flagship messaging application. They’ve been going all in with a strong marketing push aimed at college students who Google understands to be a great target audience for the platform.

The application is clearly focused on the average messaging user, and young users in particular, as they’ve been working on adding features like stickers and now a button dedicated to searching for memes. This could be a gradual rollout, but if it’s available to you then you’ll find it at the far right of Google’s emoji search feature. It should be sitting right next to the Gif button that lets you search the internet for popular Gifs that you may be interested in sharing with your friends.

Like some of the other features Google has added to Allo since its debut, this will either be something you really enjoy or something that you’ll not be interested in at all. The team has said that they aren’t afraid to experiment with new features. Many of us are wanting a true competitor to iMessage but it doesn’t seem like that will happen anytime soon.