Tech

THE 1,000,000,000 CLUB: The elite apps and platforms that have more than a billion users

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Not a billion people. Not even close. But you get the idea.  David Cannon/Getty Images

For Mark Zuckerberg, a product isn't a real business until it has a billion users.

"This may sound a little ridiculous to say, but for us, products don't really get that interesting to turn into businesses until they have about 1 billion people using them," he said during Facebook's third-quarter earnings call in 2014.

On Monday, one of the social network's sister apps just got "interesting" — WhatsApp passed the 1,000,000,000-user mark.

It's a coveted milestone that very few apps and platforms ever reach.

Here are the members of the three-comma club:

WhatsApp: Used by one-seventh of the earth's population.

Whatsapp app
Microsiervos Geek Crew/Flickr

On Monday, the Facebook-owned messaging app announced it had a billion active users, nearly one-seventh of the world's population.

WhatsApp's big news, interestingly, came out right after Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced quarterly earnings — which beat analysts' expectations and sent the stock soaring.

"But now, it's back to work," WhatsApp said in a blog post, "because we still have another 6 billion people to get on WhatsApp, and a long way left to go."

Facebook Groups: The billion-user app that's still a bit of a secret.

facebook groups app
Facebook

Facebook Groups is another Facebook product with more than a billion users. It announced it had passed that milestone in late January 2016. It's available as a standalone app and is also accessible via the main website.

Gmail: Probably the best all-around email product, ever.

gmail app android
Google

Google's incredibly popular email service passed the billion-user mark recently. The search giant announced the news on its earning call earlier this week.

Chrome: The people's browser.

Sundar Pichai Chrome
AP

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world — and in May it joined the billion-user club.

Android: 1.4 billion people who didn't buy an iPhone.

motorola moto g smartphone android
John Karakatsanis/Flickr (CC)

Google most recently provided a figure for its Android mobile operating system in September; back then, it had 1.4 billion 30-day active users.

Google Play: The biggest app store.

google play store uk
Google

Google Play, Google's Android app store, also has a billion users. It's less than the total number of active Android users, though, because not all Android-powered devices come with Google Play services installed.

YouTube: A third of everyone on the internet uses YouTube every day.

People are silhouetted as they pose with mobile devices in front of a screen projected with a Youtube logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014.     REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Thomson Reuters

Google says YouTube, its video-streaming site, also has more than a billion users — "almost a third of all people on the internet — and every day, people watch hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube videos and generate billions of views."

Windows: Now in its 30th year.

A Microsoft logo is seen on an office building in New York City, July 28, 2015. The global launch of the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system will take place on July 29. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Thomson Reuters

Windows, Microsoft's operating system, has about 1.5 billion users (across various versions), according to Time.

Microsoft Office: The workhorse of the software world.

microsoft office on ipad
REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Microsoft's suite of productivity tools has a combined 1.2 billion users, Time reports.

Facebook: 1 billion users *daily.*

facebook android
Flickr/opopododo

Facebook's core social network has 1.6 billion monthly active users — and more than a billion users who log on every day.

Television: The recently dethroned king.

TV Around The World
REUTERS/Philippe

Don't forget TV! At least 1.4 billion households around the world have televisions — and that's households, not people, meaning the total number of people it reaches will be much higher.

Seventy-nine percent of all households globally have TVs. And of those, 1 billion households had digital televisions as of June.

Google Search: 3 billion searches each day.

google search
Google

Before Google built its galaxy of products, there was Google Search. It's not clear exactly how many active users it has, but it's well over a billion. Writer Steven Levy reported Google is used 3 billion times each day.

And here's who doesn't make the cut ...

Sad Apple CEO TIm Cook
Reuters Pictures

Apple. In a press release accompanying its 2016 first-quarter earnings, Apple CEO Tim Cook boasted that "our installed base recently cross a major milestone of one billion active devices." This covers all Apple products, including MacBooks and Apple Watches, and users often have multiple (active) devices, so this doesn't really count.

Facebook Messenger. Under the stewardship of David Marcus, Facebook's Messenger app has grown explosively. It now has more than 800 million active users.

Instagram. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing app might be wildly popular, but it's not enough to get it into the 1,000,000,000 club. It has 400 million monthly active users, according to its press page.

iTunes.  Apple's music app has 800 million accounts, the company said in 2014. (Apple confirmed it has not released a more recent figure.) That's not the same as active users — and even if it was, it wouldn't make the cut.

QQ. A messaging app owned by Tencent, QQ has at least 860 million monthly active users, making it a likely future member of the club.

Twitter. The social network has 320 million active users, though it points out that if you include monthly unique visits to sites that include embedded tweets, that goes up to a billion.

Yahoo. The struggling web platform has more than a billion monthly active users, the company said in documentation accompanying its annual meeting of shareholders in 2015. But this is split across all its platforms — Yahoo Mail, Tumblr, and so on — no one single product has 1,000,000,000 users.

Weibo. The popular Chinese social network is a minnow compared with Facebook — at the start of 2015, it had "only" 200 million users.

WeChat. The Chinese messaging app, also owned by Tencent, had 650 million active users as of November, and that number is rising fast.

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Rob Price was a senior correspondent at Business Insider, based in San Francisco. He wrote investigations and long-form features about platforms, people, and power in Silicon Valley.His stories variously led to attorney general investigations, large-scale internal reviews at major tech companies, high-profile personnel departures, citation by state and federal lawmakers, and the closure of a well-funded startup. His 2022 story on the Bitfinex hack is being adapted into a feature film, and in 2024 he received an SPJ NorCal Excellence in Journalism award for his reporting on AI and relationships.Rob's scoops and exclusive stories were cited by The New York Times, Bloomberg, the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, CNBC, Politico, The Guardian, Axios, and many other national and international publications. His writing has also been published in or syndicated by The Washington Post, The Independent, Vice, Slate, and elsewhere, and he appeared on CNN, the BBC, CBS, Reuters, ABC Australia, and other broadcast media to discuss technology, business, and culture.He worked for Business Insider from 2015 to 2025. Prior to joining the features team, Rob covered Facebook and Silicon Valley, and before that wrote about tech business, policy, and the gig economy in London. Between September and October 2019, he was acting executive editor for Business Insider's UK bureau. He also sat on the board of directors for the San Francisco Press Club, the leading non-profit media advocacy group in the Bay Area, and was a volunteer crew member at the Marine Mammal Center, the world's largest animal hospital for marine mammals. You can contact Rob Price via email at robaeprice@gmail.com, or +1 650-636-6268 (Signal / WhatsApp / Cell). Selected stories:— They spoke out against their employer. Then they were hit with trade secrets suits. The rise of 'shadow stand-ins'App, Lover, Muse: Inside a 47-year-old Minnesota man's three-year relationship with an AI chatbotDeel Speed: The inside story of a $12 billion HR startup's breakneck growthPrivate islands, flying cars, and psychedelic parties: Inside the wild post-Google lives of Larry Page and Sergey Brin'I want your Instagram account': First came the threatening texts, followed by the SWAT teams. Then someone wound up dead.Inside Iconiq: How Mark Zuckerberg's banker built a secret Silicon Valley empire and made billionsGaia was a wildly popular yoga brand. Now it's a publicly traded Netflix rival pushing conspiracy theories while employees fear the CEO is invading their dreamsA drunken late-night assault allegation has roiled the secretive world of Mark Zuckerberg's private family office. Personal aides are speaking out about claims that household staff endured sexual harassment and racism from their colleagues.