The Google Logo for India Independence Day 2014. (credit: Google Doodles)

Google’s new instant messaging client Allo doesn’t seem like a compelling product. Allo is missing many of the basic features you might expect in an instant messaging app: it only works with one device at a time, it doesn’t work on a desktop or laptop computer, it doesn’t support tablets very well, it doesn’t use a Google account, and it doesn’t support SMS. Allo has had a curiously incomplete product launch, and many Google users are left wondering what the company was thinking.

Allo’s limitations are deal breakers for many people in the hyper-connected developed world, but what if you’re not in a developed country? Google hasn’t explicitly come out and said so, but Allo’s features and Google’s actions around the launch of Allo all point to it being targeted at developing countries, and one developing country in particular: India.

Google <3 India

Google’s love affair with India is no secret. Google is all about scale and having huge numbers of users, and if you look at a list of countries by population, China is first with 1.38 billion people; India is second with 1.32 billion people; and the United States is third, with 324 million people. Google would love to go to China, but that would mean dealing with the censorship-happy Chinese government, so India is the biggest country in the world where Google can freely do business. India is also the home country of Google CEO Sundar Pichai.