So far, the only companies in possession of apps or programs with more than one billion active users are Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Amazingly, Google alone has seven of them: Search, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Play. The last of these to reach the one billion mark was Gmail, as per Alphabet’s announcement earlier this month during an earnings call.
Google also has the app that reached one billion users the quickest: Android did it in only 5.8 years.
Facebook also has three apps that can make the billion user claim. Facebook itself has the largest audience out of all of these apps, with 1.59 billion monthly active users. WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for $22 billion in October 2014, has also recently announced on its blog that it also surpassed the one billion user mark. This now fulfills a promise that Mark Zuckerberg made to Facebook shareholders at the deal’s outset.
Lastly, there’s Microsoft’s Windows and Office products, which are the only paid products that could crack the list. They took the longest to get there: 25.8 years and 21.7 years respectively.
