AndroidPolice has an article today[1] that Hangouts has failed as an all-in-one messaging platform. They're going to focus it in on the enterprise - where usage is much more prevalent, apparently - whatever that means.
Hangouts is likely to become a Google Apps Slack competitor, I guess.
Also, the security aspect: Hangouts would get a bunch of backlash in the Enterprise world if they added the Allo type features to it. So they have pretty much to have separate systems for Enterprise vs Consumer if they want to integrate all the Google Now capabilities.
Hangouts is likely to become a Google Apps Slack competitor, I guess.
[1]: http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/16/google-planning-focu...