Google Play Services Becomes The First ever App To Cross a Milestone Of 5 Billion Downloads On Play Store

The Google Play Services app has crossed a milestone of 5 billion downloads on Google Play Store, making it the first ever app to do so. Google Play Services comes pre-installed on every Android device and powers all the Play services like Play Store, Play Music, Play books, and so on.

However, this should not be confused with the idea that people have manually downloaded the app this many times. Every time you log into an Android device using your Google account, Google Play counts the pre-installed apps as downloads. In short it means that there were 5 billion active Android devices at some point of time. To recall, Sunder Pichai at the recent held Google I/O summit had said that there were 2 billion active Android users.

It was also announced that  there are now 800 million users of Google Drive and over 500 million monthly userbase of Google Photos. Also, there are over 100 million devices using Google Assistant in over 70 different devices.

Meanwhile, Google has updated its Clock service by adding a darker theme, new icons and Android O support to it. There are also speculations that Google may soon also animate the Clock icon on the homescreen. Further, the screen saver controls have also been moved under the Settings button placed at the bottom.

Google recently also rolled out a 120 days' free subscription for it music streaming service Google Play Music. However, the offer is valid only new subscribers. Previously, Google offered only 90 days free subscription.

In a separate story, Google has blocked a new batch of spyware named Lipizzan.  Apparently, the Lipizzan spyware could capture users' text messages, voice calls, location data and photos.

Google, in a blog post, said it discovered a new family of Android spyware while investigating another spyware named 'Chrysaor'.

"We have found 20 Lipizzan apps distributed in a targeted fashion to fewer than 100 devices in total and have blocked the developers and apps from the Android ecosystem. Google Play Protect has notified all affected devices and removed the Lipizzan apps," the post reads.