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Google Chrome Tops 1 Billion Users

Posted by timothy on from the and-they're-grateful-for-it dept.

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.

17 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.

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    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 MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

      You can't get porn on Facebook.

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  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.

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  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 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?

    2. 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).

    3. 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.

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    4. 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.

      --
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    5. 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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

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  9. 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.