Google Says There Are Now 2 Billion Active Chrome Installs

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is hosting its Chrome Dev Summit today. There hasn't been a lot of news out of the event, but one number that stood out in today's keynote by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher was that there are now 2 billion Chrome installs in active use across desktop and mobile. This is the first time Google has shared this number. Sadly, Google didn't announce any new user numbers for Chrome today. The latest stat for active Chrome users remains at 1 billion -- a number Google shared in April. While this number is surely higher today than it was six months ago, the company decided to focus on the number of active browser install today. "I wanted to make this point that there are a lot of Chrome browsers out there," Fisher said. "What's exciting about this to you all is that when you think about building for the web, there' a lot of browsers out there that implement the latest web standards -- that implement the latest and greatest web features." The report also notes that Google has a total of seven products with more than a billion users: Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, YouTube and Google Play Store.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

they're also obviously counting every single platform from mobile, to tablets to desktops and laptops. and every install on every platform that has communicated with google servers since some arbitrary cut-off date.. since chrome installs services that constantly talk to google's servers, that's pretty much every single install that exists on a working device, regardless of whether or not its actually used, and regardless of HOW that software got installed in the first place (remember that google uses spywa

Re:

[unixisc]

That's what I think they have to, and also, by active, do they mean people who took the trouble of explicitly downloading them to their laptop or iPhone, as opposed to getting them preloaded on an Android phone or tablet? I think the 2 billion is the summation of all devices, not 2 billion people.

Re:

[Zontar The Mindless]

Chrome has come installed on every Android device I've owned, 3 of which are still in active use. The devices, that is. As for the *active* Chrome installations--if that means "actually used for browsing the Web"--make that 2 billion minus 3, please.

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[unixisc]

I thought 'active' meant the browser had to be separately downloaded i.e. applicable only to Windows and iOS

Re:

[fibonacci8]

Billion as in the same order of magnitude as the human population on Earth.

Well duh

[sremick]

Of course there are. Chrome is the new above-board "virus" being shoved on everyone as unwanted bundle-ware along with anything they download, then making itself the default browser (worked so great for IE, right?). Then once it's on there, it arrogantly thinks that "OH I HEAR YOU WANT TO RUN CHROME, OK I'M GOING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER ALL TO MYSELF", spawns a dozen processes or so and proceeds to suck up all available RAM and CPU. This is not platform specific (we're seeing it on Macs and Windows) and as a result people are switching back to Firefox because they're tired of the horrible performance and Chrome taking over the whole computer (hey Google, computers are meant to multitask).

I personally have never had a good taste about Chrome but I'm seeing tons of previous Chrome fanboys coming to the Firefox side now. *shrug*

Re:

[kosmosik]

> Chrome is the new above-board "virus" being shoved on everyone as unwanted
> bundle-ware along with anything they download,

Hardly everyones. I haven't seen any Chrome bundled with apps on Mac nor Linux, maybe it is a Windows thing but nah... And hardly anything. To be hones last time I've seen Chrome bundled with installer was AFAIR with Avast Antivirus on Windows and it is probably a good thing to include Chrome with AV on Windows since it is way more secure than IE.

> [Chrome performance compared

Re:

[duke_cheetah2003]

Of course there are. Chrome is the new above-board "virus" being shoved on everyone as unwanted bundle-ware along with anything they download, then making itself the default browser (worked so great for IE, right?). Then once it's on there, it arrogantly thinks that "OH I HEAR YOU WANT TO RUN CHROME, OK I'M GOING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER ALL TO MYSELF", spawns a dozen processes or so and proceeds to suck up all available RAM and CPU

YMMV on Chrome. I use it on everything and I've never had a problem. Well, ok, it does make my shitty laptop's GPU go bonkers once in a while, but, that's all the trouble I've had with it.

As for it taking over my computer... hardly. Seems to go away just fine when I close it.

The only thing I'm giving you is MAYBE it runs kinda crappy on older systems (it is a bit demanding.)

Now one thing I do on my computers, that I guess a fair number of other people DO NOT DO, is I close my browser every time I'm done

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Zontar The Mindless]

Spasibo, Vladimir!

Unique users of Chrome

[andrewa]

I wonder how many unique users of Chrome though? Google can likely have a fairy good idea of that by the nagging you get to log into it when installing it.

I'm personally responsible for about 16 instances of Chrome across various devices, virtual machines, etc. in my house. Others may not have quite so many instances, but I'd guess that most users have at least two instances of it (computer, phone).

Re:

[andrewa]

Clearly I should RTFA before I post, but then look at my ID#, it's a hard habit to break...

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[duke_cheetah2003]

I wonder how many unique users of Chrome though? ...
I'm personally responsible for about 16 instances of Chrome

5 here. Off the top of my head, probably more in VMs.

How do they know?

[Tough Love]

How do they know that Chrome has 2 billion active installs? Is it because Chrome always phones home?

Re:

[Dutch Gun]

How do they know that Chrome has 2 billion active installs? Is it because Chrome always phones home?

At the very least, it does when it checks home to see if it needs to auto-update. And certainly if it's tied to your Google account, syncs your settings and bookmarks, etc. I bet there are options to send metrics and diagnostic information as well.

So, yeah... It's probably pretty easy for Google to get pretty accurate global install counts from all this.

Re:

[Tough Love]

It's a safe assumption that my Android phone spies on me, after all that is why Google promotes Android and does not allow removing Google services by any method short of changing the firmware. However, if it turns out that Google also spies on my desktop computer by way of Chrome I'm going to be very upset. I don't think it does, unless you tell it to.

Installed but not used

[darkain]

YUP! I have it installed on every machine I work on, yet use it on none except for extreme situations. Same goes for IE and Firefox. None are default. None get daily usage, only there for testing purposes and debugging things. My daily driver? Opera, AKA Chromium Stable.

Which one has an incredibly stupid name?

[Tough Love]

Quick quiz: which one of the following billion user apps has an incredibly stupid name?

1. Gmail
2. Android
3. Chrome
4. Maps
5. Search
6. YouTube
7. Google Play Store

Re:

[Daniel Klugh]

To be fair, Google didn't name Youtube,

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[Tough Love]

Hint: it's one that Google did name.

Another inflated claim

[techno-vampire]

The one and only reason that Google can claim this is because every Android device comes with Chrome installed and you can't remove it. Sure, you can install Firefox or some other browser instead, but even if you never ever use Chrome, it will still be there, wasting bandwidth on updates that will never get used. And, even if you select another browser as your default, you'll still get asked which browser to use every time you click on a link in an email, with Chrome selected instead of whatever you've picked as your default. (And, the checkbox to make it the default will also be checked.)

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[swillden]

The one and only reason that Google can claim this is because every Android device comes with Chrome installed and you can't remove it.

You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist. Settings -> Apps -> Chrome -> Disable. You'll get a warning that disabling it may break other apps, but if you have another browser installed, and some app does get broken by Chrome being missing, that app is buggy and you should complain to the app vendor. The whole idea of "intents" is to allow apps to depend on one another without being t

Re:

[techno-vampire]

You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist.

Live and learn. Thank you. Of course, if you do disable it, Android uninstalls any and all updates for it, meaning that if you ever change your mind, the updates need to be downloaded and installed again. With luck, that will be one, big cumulative update, instead of having to do them all, one after the other.

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[swillden]

You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist. Live and learn. Thank you. Of course, if you do disable it, Android uninstalls any and all updates for it, meaning that if you ever change your mind, the updates need to be downloaded and installed again. With luck, that will be one, big cumulative update, instead of having to do them all, one after the other.

Yes, it will be a single update, and no bigger than it has to be. Worst case, that first update is a download of an entirely new APK.

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[Zontar The Mindless]

You mean websites don't really need to know my battery level?

Nice Non-Twist

[Scarletdown]

Although this is really a SFW* factoid they gave, it is refreshing to see that they are apparently only counting installs that actually get used. I know some companies claim any system that may have had their product installed on it (even if that product got removed and replaced with something else right away) as part of their numbers.

* SFW = So Freakin' What (or So Fuckin' What, if you are not afraid of the fuck word)

Google chrome is spyware

[WaffleMonster]

If you like Chrome use Chromium instead. At least you can turn off the spyware misfeatures.

It is not feasible to stop Chrome from calling home. It intentionally sends data to Google's main website URL to prevent anyone from trying.

Google Chrome

[codefaktory]

Yess !! I am totally agreed with it.