The assistant piece of Allo is not too bad at all for a first drop. I noticed that it handled context decently between users who invoked the assistant in their chats. If you ask about a type of takeout in a specific place, and then the other party in the chat says "what about another type" without referring to the place, it handles the situation. However, if the first person says something right after the results are returned. It ignores the context.

The Google team also added the ability to not return the same response for any given request, unless the request falls into generic search. It's not necessary, but gives it that human kind of element, and keeps it interesting.

I didn't try any kind of logical reasoning since it seemed to be heavily reliant on Google search, which is still keyword based to a degree. One day this will probably change, but it's a hard problem to solve given an open domain.

I thought I would see more direct integration with APIs as opposed to defaulting to search. I don't think I saw any in-fact beyond what is offered through search. EG - book me a ride with uber just goes to the search results.

I'm wondering if this team is working together with the home product. If there is also a heavy reliance on search, I can't imagine the user experience will be that great.