Google’s Messages app surpasses 500 million Play Store installs

Ben Schoon | May 27 2019 - 7:58 am PT

Google’s Messages app has slowly been making its way to more devices in the Android ecosystem via the Play Store. Recently, the app surpassed 500 million installs, a milestone for any application.

Noted by Android Police, Google’s Messages app hit this Play Store milestone in the past few days. This number is significant because Google doesn’t require phone makers to pre-install this app as a part of the Google Mobile Services package. Of course, some devices do still include this app out of the box.

For Google’s Pixel lineup as well as Android One devices from Nokia and others, Google Messages is installed and used as the default client for SMS. Thanks to its RCS capabilities, other OEMs such as Huawei have also opted to include Messages as the default client of their devices as well. Other names that ship phones with Messages installed include Motorola, LG, and small names such as Essential.

Still, this number is very impressive, as it means that quite a lot of users opted to actually install Google’s Messages app from the Play Store and replace the client their device came with. It also lands in the top 25 in the communication category in the Play Store as well.