Makes me wonder if Google are losing the plot on the software development end of things. Allo was a disaster from the moment they advertised the thing and even diehard supporters are just giving up defending it after seeing the full facts.
To top that off, Nougat still has a lot of issues (it's fine on my 6P) and the rollout was far from smooth due to inconsistent battery issues. To top it off their use of Material Design is getting worse - Pixel Launcher, YouTube which seems to get a new UI everytime I launch it.
Making a WhatsApp competitor that no one will have remotely even heard of (hello Duo) is going fail horribly. Either make it a core part of your OS like G.Music etc or it'll be ignored.
With the next iteration of Android i'd expect it to be a pre-installed app.