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Google Chrome Tops 1 Billion Users

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Venture Beat: At the I/O 2015 developer conference today, Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of product, announced that Chrome has passed 1 billion active users. Less than a year ago, Google revealed Android has over 1 billion active users. These are indeed Google's biggest ecosystems. Google also shared that Google Search, YouTube, and Google Maps all have over 1 billion users as well. Gmail will reach the milestone next; it has 900 million users.

63 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. guys, i got an idea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Screw the open internet. Let's put EVERYTHING on Google! No.... Let's make Google be the internet!!

    Who's with me on this?

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Captcha: amassed!

    1. Re:guys, i got an idea! by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Some people already seem to think that Facebook is the Internet.

    2. Re:guys, i got an idea! by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And people used to think that AOL was "the internet". They were wrong then, too.

    3. Re:guys, i got an idea! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      The sad part about is that there are far more people who think that AOL / Facebook / The Blue E / Google is the "Internet" than not.

      Then there is the tube guy, but he's dead.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:guys, i got an idea! by chipschap · · Score: 1

      A pity. AOL had a lot of entertainment value, even if it wasn't quite the kind AOL intended.

    5. Re:guys, i got an idea! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

      You can't get porn on Facebook.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    6. Re:guys, i got an idea! by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      Patience.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    7. Re: guys, i got an idea! by jmac_the_man · · Score: 1
      You're wrong. Ted Stevens' point wasn't that the tubes seperated your traffic from mine from his, but that, like a tube, any individual link has a finite throughput per time unit.

      A 100 Mbps link can transmit 100 Mb per second, right? That's what he was saying.

      Stevens was pointing out the effect of part of an FCC Net Neutrality regulation. The regulation would have curtailed ISPs from advertising their maximum rate and instead forced them to guarantee a specific link speed. If the regulation was passed, Stevens argued, ISPs would cap transfer rates to a low value ALL THE TIME rather than make expensive infrastructure improvements to bring transfer rates to what was previously advertised or allow the status quo (downloads up to the advertised maximum at off peak times) to continue.

    8. Re:guys, i got an idea! by Chalnoth · · Score: 1

      Sort of. But that is only really an analogy for the cables that connect various pieces of the Internet together. The real complexity of the Internet is in the services which supply or route data. So your information has gone through one tube: how does it know which tube it should go to next in order to get to its destination? And when you load a webpage, where does that information come from, and how is it built so that millions of people can all look at the same information at the same time?

      So it's really a tremendous oversimplification, as the "series of tubes" describes the most uninteresting bits of the Internet.

  2. Probably a more useful metric than social networks by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While there are certainly people who are running chrome on different unlinked devices, this measurement is probably still a lot more meaningful than when facebook says it has 12 billion users. Similarly, I'm not sure how meaningful the measurement of 900 million gmail accounts is; I have more than one myself.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  3. And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And here I am about to ditch Chrome for Firefox because the 4+gb of memory usage on desktop with a bunch of inactive tabs open is meaning I can't really do work properly anymore because my machine is liable to lock up from running out of memory. And this isn't hundreds of tabs - it's like, 30-40 tops.

    1. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just add some swap then.

    2. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Imagix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Somehow I've never understood the penchant for people to have tens of tabs open in a browser. Right now I have 4, and two of them are email tabs. The only time I get anywhere near tens of tabs is when I'm actively searching for things and I open potential results as a new tab. But as I go through and determine which are useful, I close the rest until I'm down to the 1 or 2 that I actually need. With hundreds of tabs, how do you even find the tab that you need?

    3. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      With hundreds of tabs, how do you even find the tab that you need?

      That's why there are to many extensions to help manage dozens/hundreds of tabs. I agree with you though, there is no need for that many tabs all the time. I haven't heard a great explanation of it from anyone.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    4. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Mutiltas....

      Wait! A squir ...

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    5. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by jopsen · · Score: 2

      Somehow I've never understood the penchant for people to have tens of tabs open in a browser....With hundreds of tabs, how do you even find the tab that you need?

      If you run any linux desktop environment you have virtual desktops... I have on for each project I'm actively working on... Each desktop features: text editor, file-browser, terminal and a web browser window with multiple tabs. Those tabs are usually opened on relevant documentation, bugs, github pull-requests, stackoverflow or any other resource related to what I'm coding.

      Sure a desktop can sit idle for a day or two, but usually I come back to a project just to make a quick adjustment. This is a flow for node based projects, with many components. For larger code bases I usually have a clone or two of the code base, so that I can develop my main patch in one desktop, and try small hacks in others or go searching for code examples of how do something (In large code bases with custom C++ string and container type implementations nothing is trivial).

    6. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by devent · · Score: 2

      I never understand the penchant for people who complain how many tabs other people have open. Is there a rule that you should limit yourself to single digit count of tabs open? But to answer your question, Firefox have since ages vertical tree tabs as plugin, and the lack of such vertical tabs plugin is the reason why I don't use Chrome.

      --
      http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
    7. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 2

      I think I stated my point badly. Yes, I also open many tabs while googling something, and then go through them after I have several open. If I was a student doing much research and often had dozens of tabs to sift through, I would certainly have one of those extensions.

      The OP though sounds like he just routinely has dozens of tabs open all day long, all week long even, and that it takes all his system's memory. The obvious solution is the same of the old doctor joke: Doc, it hurts when I swing my arm this way. ... Well then, don't swing your arm that way. You're cured. That'll be $20 dollars.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    8. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      I scroll through an RSS reader and middle-click on links to open them in a new tab for reading later. When I've read it I close the tab and move on. The reason for this behaviour is that I have long file saves at work and I keep myself entertained for roughly 90 seconds at a time. Sometimes I read what I got, sometimes I find new stuft. Basically it's what you do except I don't get enough time to go through them all. I have a few tabs that have been open for over two months. Sooner or later I'll find a half hour to read that whole thing.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    9. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by narcc · · Score: 2

      I'm running two versions of FireFox right now (the current 38.0.1 release and 40.0a2 nightly) Combined, both are using less than 700mb. I've had Nightly open for a little over a day, and the current release for about 6 days.

    10. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Chalnoth · · Score: 1

      I frequently have quite a few up. I'll keep tabs up if I plan to go back to them later. Once it goes above about ten tabs or so, though, it becomes pretty worthless and I just close them all.

      I've had memory issues with Chrome a few times, but usually due to the Flash plugin, and things stay pretty zippy as long as I disable Flash (especially nice because usually the only thing it impacts is it makes for fewer annoying ads).

    11. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Bathroom+Humor · · Score: 1

      I use my tabs as a replacement for bookmarks, for the most part. There are many sites that I simply use often, or pages want to visit at a moments notice whenever I wish. And some i'm saving for later (though I could conceivably use bookmarks for that, keeping it in a tab is just the easier/lazier way to do it).

      With the use of several tab management add-ons, like tree-style tabs, extra tab options, session saving, two forms of tab grouping, automatic timed tab suspension to save resources etc, It has become quite convenient to not use bookmarks and have dozens of tabs to access at any time, without them necessarily being in the way or clogging my workflow very much. Granted, if I switched browsers, I would have to deal with using bookmarks more often, and having so many tabs loaded up really slows down my browsers cold-start time. But at the time, there's no way to use the browser any better without sacrificing saved webpages, or taking longer to access sites (which, to me, is the point of a browser).

      I may be an uncommon use-case, I recognize that. And too be fair, I do hoard certain tabs that I'm likely to never look at for long enough to be too useful. I could likely cut out half of my saved tabs and lose nothing except that "what if..." feeling.
      But I wanna get the most out of my experience, and it's a LOT better than hoarding physical objects.

    12. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      This started happening when web browsers ditched bookmarks, because people are stupid, hate organization, and don't need useful stuff.

    13. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by Brulath · · Score: 1

      There's an extension for Chrome called The Great Suspender which purports to free up resources by automatically suspending tabs when inactive for a period of time (unless they're on a whitelisted domain). It greys out the tab text/icon, unloads the page and replaces it with a "click to reload" dialogue; it basically just redirects to: chrome-extension://klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg/suspended.html#uri=ORIGINAL_URL_HERE, so you'd have to remember to whitelist inactive forms and such. It doesn't reload the original pages when you start chrome until you explicitly click the reload button, too, so it helps with restarting the browser a bit faster.

      Still no way to get tree style tabs in chrome, though. I miss those.

    14. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by balbus000 · · Score: 1

      That'll be $20 dollars.

      If you live in America, I think you're off by several orders of magnitude...

    15. Re:And here I am about to ditch Chrome... by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      Well, I did say it was an old joke.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  4. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by ArcadeMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Going with the free email from your ISP means that you lose your email address if/when you switch to another ISP.

  5. Re:Billions by ArcadeMan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let the RIAA count those numbers again, because I'm pretty sure the total should be around 600 billion users.

    Then again if you let Verizon do the math, Google only has 60 million users.

  6. quite amazing by roman_mir · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Nobody teaches you how to handle 100,000,000 simultaneous user requests. Throwing more and more hardware at it is what you cannot escape when dealing with tens of millions of users a second. At least Google is not a bank, where things really need to be synchronized across accounts and be perfectly transactional. It doesn't matter to Google that there are no transactions. A piece of data presented to a user in the USA may be different than the one presented to a user in Japan, but it isaybe an answer to the same question, but the data did not propagate all the way everywhere yet. Even so, it is quite a challenge to deal with hundreds of millions of users daily and tens or hindreds of millions concurrent user requests a second. They are doing it really well too. I can only imagine the massive problems that need to be solved. It is jarring. Good stuff.

    1. Re:quite amazing by rhodium_mir · · Score: 1

      PRIVEAT INDUSTRY will teach you if you get grubberment off their backs. First and only step is to replace paper fiat theft money with intrinsically valuable rhodium. All else shall follow, rainbows included (for those who work hard enough).

      --
      You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
  7. Re:Billions by Livius · · Score: 1

    600 billion users should be enough for any software.

  8. Google Maps would have me as a customer if... by bogaboga · · Score: 1

    Look folks, I have avoided Google Maps on Android for one major reason: The app shuts off the screen, while in use! Imagine that for a second. This has been an ongoing thing since the very beginning.

    Consequently, for Maps, I use Waze which exhibits no such annoyance.

  9. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    My android phone has a gmail account by default. I use it and my Yahoo account to send messages/pics from the phone. It's easy and free, so what's the worst that can go wrong? ;^)

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  10. Re:Billions by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    D'oh. Off by 40 billion.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  11. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

    Might not be universally true anymore. Check the terms :)

    Hotmail used to delete all your mailbox if you didn't check it for six monthes (just the content, you could then start using it again). I think they stopped doing that. But back then I lost all my email (not much used or for unimportant registrations etc.) and stopped using them. With 100x bigger hard drives etc. they don't play these games anymore I think.

    Modern issue is getting "helpfully" locked out of your account, microsoft or google. I have a friend who cannot access his account at all. He registered using an old friend's cell phone number at the time.
    The location based lock out is very creepy as he once could access mail in another place in the same city, but at a newer place in the same city he was locked out.
    So.. if you have an ISP email that says you still can use it after leaving the ISP it may be a lot safer! (the @ispname.com gives them a bit of advertising). Microsoft and Google blackmail you into giving them your personal data else your account may get locked and thus you may lose contacts and important messages.

  12. Re:Not much of a choice on linux.. by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    I just installed Linux on a neighbor's PC, and found out that Flash is stuck on version 11.2 for Firefox, with no plans to upgrade.

    Had to install Chrome just so she can play her flash games on Facebook.

    Does anyone have suggestions on how to speed up the games? They run slower then they should.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  13. Add-ons and plug-ins? by chthon · · Score: 2

    I considered using Chrome some time, but Firefox still beats it regarding plug-ins and their configurations: Adblock+, Noscript, Lightbeam, ... and the possibilities to block anything that you do not want on your computer/browser.

  14. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by jader3rd · · Score: 1

    Going with the free email from your ISP means that you lose your email address if/when you switch to another ISP.

    That wasn't my experience. Once they started putting ads in the web client, they were more than happy to keep hosting an email address for you.

  15. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by jopsen · · Score: 1

    If you're worried about changing ISPs a lot, then pay a few bucks a year and get one with a dedicated email hosting company, of which there are many. The price is negligible, roughly the price of a cup or two of coffee per year.

    I've been wanting to move away from gmail, and have an .com domain, but I can't figure out what to put in from the of the @, Ie. what goes here: @.com.

    So for now I'm stuck on gmail... and that email address is getting used so many places I'll never be able to stop using it.

  16. Pretty cool for beta by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine! What the user base is going to be once they are out of beta and do the first release.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  17. Re:Given Android needs a Google account by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    More than one android device per gmail account? My chromebook and my android phone are linked to the same gmail account. I am sure I can add a couple of tablets and more phones too.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  18. I use chrome for gmail by mbone · · Score: 1

    I use Chrome, but only for gmail. That way, I figure that Google just gets to read my gmail (mostly used for public email lists) twice.

  19. Re:Billions by reboot246 · · Score: 1

    And how many Google+ users would that be? A dozen?

  20. Lies, damn lines, and statistics by mrsam · · Score: 1

    That one billion figure doesn't sound as impressive after one considers that it's fairly likely that it's mostly obtained by counting every Android install that comes bundled with Chrome. I'd be shocked, just shocked, if Google does NOT count someone who used Chrome a few times, before installing Firefox mobile. Like me, for example. I hardly ever use Chrome on my Googlephone. But, I'm sure I'm counted in that billion-plus figure.

    1. Re:Lies, damn lines, and statistics by CCarrot · · Score: 1

      That one billion figure doesn't sound as impressive after one considers that it's fairly likely that it's mostly obtained by counting every Android install that comes bundled with Chrome. I'd be shocked, just shocked, if Google does NOT count someone who used Chrome a few times, before installing Firefox mobile. Like me, for example. I hardly ever use Chrome on my Googlephone. But, I'm sure I'm counted in that billion-plus figure.

      Exactly what I was thinking. Should it really count if the user can't uninstall the damn thing?

      Would be a more useful metric if they subtracted the number of users that have it disabled in their android devices, or haven't opened it in the last year, or whatever...but maybe they did, I don't really care enough to find out :P

      --
      "I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
  21. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

    And going with Google means you lose that one when Google goes out of business. Which, I promise you, it will eventually.

    If you're worried about changing ISPs a lot, then pay a few bucks a year and get one with a dedicated email hosting company, of which there are many. The price is negligible, roughly the price of a cup or two of coffee per year.

    Dedicated email hosting companies, including those you pay actual money for, would go out of business much easier than Google would. Google's size and reach is vast. Google would have to be sitting on a net operating loss of several million per year for a few decades before they'd ever go out of business.

    Meanwhile, a single recession could potentially kill a dedicated email company.

  22. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

    Until they're bought by BiggerCableCo who then converts it to an @biggercableco domain, and you lose all of your contacts.

  23. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    What alternative to GMail, preferably self-hosting, does close to as good as Google for searching through email? That's a serious question, that's what's keeping me on GMail. It's just a little too handy at being an organizational tool.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  24. Re:Given Android needs a Google account by Chalnoth · · Score: 1

    They were counting active users, which I'm pretty sure means having sent or read an e-mail, probably within the last 30 days. Also, I'm pretty sure you actually have to set up your Gmail account specifically before it exists (it's just that doing so is trivial once you've got a Google account). So users who never bother to open the e-mail, and users who have multiple accounts but only ever read one, should not be counted.

    Of course, it's always possible that the people collecting this data are making mistakes and overcounting people in ways that are easy to correct. Software bugs do exist. And it can sometimes be a bit difficult to correct a bug when that bug is making your product look better.

  25. Re:Given Android needs a Google account by Chalnoth · · Score: 1

    Apparently it's commonplace in some locations around the world for the phone vendor to set you up with a random Google account so you can just pick up the phone and use it.

  26. If I could just get the ecosystems without Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Some point to the iOS vs Android as being walled garden vs. freedom, while it is actually more like closed garden vs. being a prostitute. Some point to Firefox vs. Chrome as okay vs better, while it is actually more like freedom vs. being a prostitute.

    I keep hoping that Android and Chrome will successfully fork from Google at some point so we can enjoy great open source software AND freedom. What, exactly, makes that unreasonable?

  27. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by Chalnoth · · Score: 1

    More like around a billion dollars per year for several decades. Google currently has over $60 billion in cash.

    Google's business is doing quite well, and this will probably continue as long as its leadership is pretty decent at business. That's not to say Google can't fail, but it would take a long period of really bad management decisions for that to happen.

  28. isn't gchrome default browser on android? by 4wdloop · · Score: 1

    Which users do they count?
    Desktop only?

    --
    4wdloop
  29. 1B users and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    it is still a pile of steaming elephant dung.

    Not news, Film at 11.

  30. Discloses something interesting by Dishwasha · · Score: 1

    Either I should stop buying Google ads because they are severely overstating their exposure or people within the United States of America are not Google's primary customer base.

  31. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by dj245 · · Score: 1

    Going with the free email from your ISP means that you lose your email address if/when you switch to another ISP.

    Thats why you own your own domain. Hosting company goes out of business,you switch to another. You can even forward it to someone else if you prefer their mail interface.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  32. and Billions have been served by McDonalds by PrimeNumber · · Score: 1

    So? Chrome crashes constantly and sucks now -- despite Google removing features every new version. Android is fragmented as hell and slow, with Google trying to remove as much open-source as it can.

    Meanwhile, the big news for developers at Google I/O was the awesome news about how Google can help developers serve even more shitty adverts to app users.

    Fuck Google, I'm going Microsoft, at least Microsoft plays well with others now that Ballmer is gone and Nadella in charge.

  33. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by Cochonou · · Score: 1

    A Google service can be killed without Google going out of business. History has shown this many times.

  34. Re:Not much of a choice on linux.. by Cochonou · · Score: 1

    You can use this wrapper to use the chrome flash plugin with Firefox. It will not speed up flash, though.

  35. # of users by mcswell · · Score: 1

    The downside of this is that they can afford to be totally unresponsive to users. Google has recently replaced their classic Google maps with a piece of junk. Don't take my word for it, go to the Google maps forum, this link for example: https://productforums.google.c.... While every single one of the close to 1000 posts on that thread (except for the Google representative's initial post) is negative, Google can afford to ignore them (and in fact, not even respond to them), because the complainers constitute a tiny fraction of the number of users. (And it's not clear how many they represent, i.e. how many other users hate the new version but haven't taken the time to post their displeasure--or may not know how to do so.)

  36. Lookout Facebook :-) by iq145 · · Score: 1

    Or should i say Farcebook?

  37. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by Brulath · · Score: 1

    If the domain is yourname.com then hello@yourname.com or firstname@yourname.com works; the latter is probably less confusing if you have to verbally dictate it to someone (unless you just spam business cards everywhere). So saying "john at john smith dot com" is clearer than "hello at john smith dot com", because verbally saying hello mid sentence is unusual.

    You can forward gmail emails to another address pretty easily, and even reply to those emails from that email address or from your primary one. It's easy to set up in Google Apps with your own domain, and probably just as simple on other hosting services (which you'll presumably use).

  38. Re:Probably a more useful metric than social netwo by jopsen · · Score: 1

    Hello is a good one... I might that... because the domain is [firstname][last name initials].com