Rumor: Google is working on WhatsApp competitor that doesn’t require a login

By admin On Oct 3, 2014

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According to an Indian newspaper, Google is working on a competitor for chat application WhatsApp, which, unlike the current Hangouts, does not require a Google login. It is unknown whether it is a variant of Hangouts or a completely different application.

With the application, Google would target countries such as India, where hundreds of millions of users will come online in the coming years, says the Indian newspaper Economic Times. Google already has a chat application with Hangouts, but it requires users to log in with a Google account. In the new app, that would not be necessary.

It is unknown how Google plans to implement chat without a Google account. Several chat apps already work with a system without a login. WhatsApp sends a code to a mobile number, which users can use to log in. Competitor Telegram does much the same, but allows users to chat on different devices with the same account. Facebook Messenger also no longer requires a Facebook login, but does ask for some data and a password.

The app should be released in 2015, the newspaper reports. The application is said to be in an early stage of development at the moment. This means that it is also possible that the app will not come out at all or that Google will merge the functionality with other applications. Google more often decides later in the development phase whether and how it will release certain products.

There are no images of the chat application yet. WhatsApp, soon to be owned by Facebook, is the most widely used chat application in India. The situation is different in many other Asian countries. Competitors like Kakaotalk and Line are also popular there.

Google seems to have gotten more attention for India in recent times. It is also the first country where Android One smartphones have been released, the cheap smartphones for which Google itself develops the software. The search giant also made a modified version of YouTube for this, with the option to save videos offline.