The Unnecessary Google Assistant Android App Reaches 500 Million Installations
The Google Assistant mobile app has been downloaded and installed on Android devices from the Google Play Store more than 500 million times, just 10 months after breaking 100 million downloads. Google Assistant is a built-in part of Android, so the huge popularity of the app, first noted by Android Police, seems somewhat bizarre.
Assisting Assistant
Google Assistant’s app page on Google Play mentions way at the bottom that it isn’t needed on phones with Google Assistant already available. The skyrocketing number of installations suggests that hasn’t made many people decide not to set it up. Downloading it lets users pull up the voice assistant’s settings without having to navigate sub-menus on the device, and it gives a shortcut to the voice commands. These minor conveniences are about the only practical purpose for the app on Android but don’t seem likely as the reason half a billion people grabbed an unnecessary app for their phone.
It took about three years for the Android Google Assistant app to reach 100 million downloads. An extra 400 million downloads in less than a year would be impressive for any app. The redundant nature of Google Assistant on Android only makes it more notable. The Play Store only says there are more than 500 million installations, so it’s impossible to know when it will hit the 1 billion installation milestone, but the accelerating rate of the last year suggests it could be soon. Despite quintupling in installations, the overall opinion of the app seems pretty durable. The 4.1-star average rating is still there, though the number of reviews has risen from 255,000 to 402,000. Once again, there appear to be a lot of people who enjoy the app without wanting to review it.
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