Ablo Best App 2019: What Made It Win Google Play's Top Prize

In December 2019, Google named Ablo its Best App of 2019. For a moment, the random chat app was the most celebrated way to meet strangers across borders. And in that moment, it was genuinely good.

Ablo launched in early 2019 from Massive Media, the Belgian team behind Netlog and Twoo, inside Match Group. It hit #6 of the day on Product Hunt on 22 January 2019 with 139 upvotes. But the real breakthrough came at the end of the year, when Google Play gave it the top prize.

What Ablo Was Like in 2019: Free, Unlimited, Ad-Free

The Ablo that won the award was a different product from what it became. In 2019, everything was free and unlimited.

You tapped to fly, and a paper plane crossed a globe while a loading card showed trivia about your destination: "Hold your seat, we are flying to Kenya." You landed on one stranger in that country and started chatting. Every message was machine-translated both ways. If you both wanted to, you could move to a video call with live subtitles.

There were no daily flight limits. No paywalls for choosing a continent or gender. No coins charged when a match left in one second. No paid read receipts. No ads at all.

Users loved it. One 2020 review called it "one of the best application... No ads, no hanging," and 312 people found that helpful. Another said, "Ablo is like a Travel Agency which don't charge anything." The translation was praised as "very accurate, much better than Baidu" by a Chinese reviewer in 2021.

The flight concept was the brand. The globe animation, the miles you earned for using the app, the destination trivia – it all made meeting a stranger feel like travel. French users wrote, "j'ai voyagé sans bouger de chez moi" (I travelled without leaving home).

The Award That Changed Everything

Google Play's Best App of 2019 was announced in December 2019. The effect was immediate. Monthly reviews tripled from 653 to 1,595. The app went from a niche product to a global phenomenon.

The award brought visibility at exactly the right time. The pandemic lockdowns of early 2020 were just weeks away. Ablo became a lifeline for people stuck at home, desperate for human connection across borders. One Spanish reviewer wrote in 2022, "Ablo me ayudó a salir de la depresión" (Ablo helped me out of depression). A Russian reviewer said, "подтянула английский очень быстро" (my English improved very quickly).

The award also set expectations. People who discovered Ablo through the award expected the free, ad-free, unlimited experience they read about. They got it – for a while.

What Changed After the Award

The award brought users, but it also brought pressure to monetize. Coins had already arrived in August 2019 for choosing a gender or continent. Then came the changes.

In early 2020, as lockdowns started, coin prices roughly tripled. Continent plus gender went from 30 to 90 coins. Gender alone went from 20 to 60 coins. Users called out the timing unprompted.

In late May 2020, a hard cap of 10 free flights a day appeared. Reconnecting with an existing friend now needed a paid gift. Users started moving friends to WhatsApp and Instagram.

Over the next two years, Ablo slowly paywalled its own core. Video calling unlocked only after about 20 messages. Coins were charged even when the match left without a word. Paid read receipts appeared. The in-house translator was replaced by forced Google Translate.

Each step made a visible dip in sentiment. A recurring review: "2019 was free and magical, now everything costs coins."

The Core That Stayed the Same

Despite the changes, the core idea never wavered. You tap to fly to a random country. You chat with a stranger. Messages are translated both ways. You earn miles for using the app.

That core is what people still miss. The grief reviews ran from the shutdown in September 2022 into August 2026. "La extraño" (I miss it), wrote a Spanish reviewer in December 2022, and 1,140 people agreed – the most-upvoted line in the post-shutdown reviews.

What the 2019 Version Teaches Us

The 2019 Ablo was a product that worked because it removed friction. You didn't need a shared language. You didn't need money. You didn't need to install anything special. You just tapped and flew.

The award proved that people wanted this. The demand never died. People are still searching for it in 2026. The 2025 copycat app, com.bintree.ablo, pulled 100K installs with the name alone and a 2.2-star rating. That is the size of the leftover search demand.

What Came After Ablo

Ablo shut down on 30 September 2022. Users were redirected to Azar, Hyperconnect's video-chat app, which Match Group had bought in 2021. Users rejected Azar almost unanimously: reviewers called it video-only, more sexual, "not the same." "Ablo geri gelsin, Azar'ı istemiyoruz" (Bring Ablo back, we don't want Azar), wrote Turkish users.

The listing stayed live for years on a broken backend, collecting 1-star "something went wrong" reviews. In 2023-26 the 1-star share was about 38%.

Other alternatives appeared. Omegle closed in November 2023. The 2025 copy is failing on paywalls and bugs. Users called Ablo "just another Omegle" after it removed text-first chat in November 2021 and swapped the translator.

What People Still Look For

The 2019 Ablo worked because it was free, unlimited, and ad-free. The translation was excellent. The flight concept was fun. The moderation was already a problem – instant bans from a single report, no reason given, no working appeal – but the core was strong.

What people who miss it still look for is that same core: one-to-one text chat with real-time translation, no paywalls for talking to someone, no daily limits, no ads. Fairer moderation, and free reconnects with friends.

Olu is built around that core. Tap to take off and fly to a random country. One-to-one text chat with messages translated both ways, the original a tap away. Miles are earned and never bought. Nothing you need to talk to someone costs money. Friends and reconnecting are free. It works in a browser, nothing to install. If nobody from a country is online, you may meet an AI local, which is always labelled as AI.

No video. No voice calls. No dating. Just friendship and cultural exchange across borders.