Technology

Gmail now has over 1 billion monthly active users: Sundar Pichai

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that company’s email service Gmail has over 1 billion users now. During parent company Alphabet’s earnings call, Google CEO Pichai spoke about company’s mail service crossing the milestone last quarter. Gmail becomes the seventh Google product with over billion users. The other services include Search, Android, Maps, Chrome, YouTube and Google Play services.

Achieving 1 billion monthly active users shows how Google has impacted the email service after search. For long, email has been the core business for IBM and Microsoft. If legends are anything to go by, emails have been the defacto communication tools at enterprises and most enterprises always relied on Microsoft Exchange services or IBM’s Lotus Notes for their email needs.

Google’s 1 billion users could well be normal consumers and it can’t be ruled out enterprises are highly encouraging employees to use their regular email account for office mails too. The billion user mark proves Google’s Gmail simplicity reaching masses. Its also worth noting that Google’s Android platform requires Google account which also signs up users for Gmail service.

Google CEO Pichai also spoke about company’s efforts to simplify email with Inbox. Inbox was launched as an invite only mail service that organised mails better than Gmail. It had best spam filter and recently got a smart reply option too. Sundar said Inbox users are liking smart reply and Google will scale it to whole new level this year.

Google CEO Pichai sounded extremely confident of Android flagships set to launch this year. Just a day before, Samsung announced ‘The Next Galaxy’ event for February 21. This could not be a coincidence. During the earnings call, Pichai also touched upon some other services like Android Wear, Android Auto and Cloud services.

He said Android Wear is set to take great shape this year with help from new partners like New Balance and Casio. He added over 40 car manufacturers are testing Android auto on their automobiles and its own driverless cars are set to hit the roads this year. Sundar Pichai didn’t give much on Android TV but said its being preferred over other services as mainstream home entertainment system.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has surpassed Apple as the most valuable company and it added that the company saw 30 percent growth in spending on Google Play services. Google Play services is the model through which users buy apps and help Google split revenues with developers. Pichai noted that this quarter was an exception with significant Google Play spending coming from countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia. Google had recently dropped the base price of app to as low as Rs 10 and has been running significant discount campaigns encouraging users to spend on paid apps and services.

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