That’s right, Gmail for Android is the very first app on Google Play to hit 1 billion downloads. Sure Google Play Services beat out Gmail, but that’s also installed automatically on every device running Android 2.2 or higher. While Gmail is installed on most devices, but not all devices. It’s still an amazing accomplishment, and one that I thought it had already surpassed. Gmail has been the king of email for quite some time, but officially only about 2 years now. For those that were using Gmail way back in the day, you’ll remember that it was in beta for a long time, it seemed like forever actually. But it’s still the most widely used email service out there. Even ahead of Yahoo and Hotmail. Which used to be the hip email services.
It’s important to remember that the number of downloads isn’t each time you flash a new ROM and download Gmail, but it’s unique downloads, so that’s about 1 billion accounts and devices. So if you had a Galaxy S5 and a HTC One M8 and have two accounts on each, that would equate 4 downloads. I’m probably responsible for quite a few downloads since I do use Gmail on every device I review around here. Gmail is still a great app and it’s about to get even better at Google I/O next month. Google is supposedly already testing a new interface for both the Android app and the web-based version of Gmail. Which is said to be a pretty big overhaul. We’ll have to wait until Google I/O to see exactly what Google does with Gmail, but it’s definitely exciting.
How long have you been using Gmail? Is it your main email service or do you use something else like Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, etc., for email as well? Let us know in the comments below.