Google Assistant Now Available on Almost a Billion Devices

Google announced a major milestone for Google Assistant today.

The company expects Assistant to be available on one billion devices by the end of this month. With a bunch of new products coming out at CES with Google Assistant, that might be an easy reach for Google. The company has been making rapid improvements to Assistant over the last year, with new integrations coming out almost every month. And with Google continuing to bring Assistant to new types of devices, that’s unlikely to slow down anytime soon. That 1 billion number is still much larger than Amazon’s Alexa, but most of Google’s devices are Android devices, so it kind of makes sense at the end of the day.

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Google says Assistant’s number of active users grew 4x over the last year, which is really massive if you think about it. It’s obviously unclear exactly how many active users Google Assistant had in the past, so it is difficult to understand the exact degree of growth here. The company said Assistant is now compatible with over 10,000 smart home devices from over 1,600 brands, up from the 5,000 devices from May 2018. That’s still significantly lower than Amazon’s 28,000 Alexa-compatible smart home devices.

On the hardware side of things, Google says it had another record year for Google Home devices over the holiday season in terms of sales. The company apparently sold millions of Google Home devices over the holidays, with smart displays being the main standout. In fact, Google says one out of every seven Google Home devices that were activated over the holidays was a Google Home Hub.

Google Assistant has come a long way over the last year, so the growth is kind of well-deserved.

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Conversation 14 comments

  • RobertJasiek

    07 January, 2019 - 9:23 am

    <p>Spyware – no, thanks. Reminds me why not to buy any Android or other Google-dependent device.</p>

  • André Kittler

    07 January, 2019 - 9:41 am

    <p>Means nothing. Cortana is in 700M devices. </p>

    • Tony Barrett

      07 January, 2019 - 10:23 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#392479">In reply to Andre_Kittler:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yeah, but nobody uses Cortana!</p>

      • Rob_Wade

        07 January, 2019 - 10:46 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#392485">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>I do. On everything. All the time. The fact that I can have 100% hands-free capability on my Xbox, PC, Surface Pro and Windows phone (most importantly) is of paramount importance to me.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

        • Bats

          07 January, 2019 - 1:06 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#392503">In reply to Rob_Wade:</a></em></blockquote><p>Your nobody</p>

      • André Kittler

        07 January, 2019 - 11:38 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#392485">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>And who uses google assistant on android? 80% of 1B? </p><p>Or is it 20%?</p><p>5%? </p><p><br></p><p>I give google a point because it does "work' better on non-english users the Cortana. But I'm really stretching&nbsp;the meaning of "work"… it's, basically, better than useless.</p>

      • lwetzel

        Premium Member
        07 January, 2019 - 2:59 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#392485">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>and what number is equal to nobody?</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    07 January, 2019 - 10:15 am

    <p>Given that there are over 2.5 billion Android smartphones devices out there, only 1 billion devices in total with Assistant, that seems relatively few. Or don't they count smartphones under devices?</p><p>As to us, 5 Android phones, 2 Android TVs, Assistant disabled on all of them.</p><p>The same with Alexa, 2 Fire tablets and a FireTV, Alexa disabled on all of them.</p>

  • Patrick3D

    07 January, 2019 - 10:22 am

    <p>Statistics for the percentage of people that regularly use a voice assistant on their phone (Google and iOS) is in the single digits. Over 90% will try the assistant but don't use it regularly. Counting phones is also pointless since regular users like myself might not be using the native assistant (I use Alexa on and Android phone.)</p>

  • CaymanDreamin

    Premium Member
    07 January, 2019 - 10:42 am

    <p>It would be interesting to see how many unique users or household there are. For example we have 3 homes, 2 minis, 2 insignia speakers and 1 smart display that are active in our home. We also have 2 minis that are not plugged in (replaced by the insignia units), 2 that are still in the box and one home still in the box. Google has essentially been giving these away. Most of our minis came free with Nest purchases, 1 free from Spotify and one of the homes was a gift for Christmas. It might be a little overkill, but I have MS and we use them like a modern day "help, I've fallen and I can't get up" in addition to their regular uses. I know we're not unique though, my mother has 3 in her house and my son has 2 speakers and a display in his 2 bedroom apartment.</p>

  • skane2600

    07 January, 2019 - 2:03 pm

    <p>Kind of reminds me of Microsoft bragging about the number of "devices" Windows runs on. Take away PCs and in the case of Google Assistant Android devices and the numbers aren't so impressive.</p>

  • rsmcomputer

    07 January, 2019 - 2:17 pm

    <p>I guess I'm a nobody too! Kinda refreshing being irrelevant. Reminds me of the good ole days of using the best smart phone yet: WindowsPhone!</p>

    • skane2600

      08 January, 2019 - 12:00 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#392585">In reply to rsmcomputer:</a></em></blockquote><p>I wonder if it's still true that Windows Phone is the only one that can read incoming texts over Bluetooth and let's you text back via voice through Bluetooth all hands-free. Really handy while driving.</p><p><br></p><p>Just to clarify, I'm not talking about something you initiate with your phone. The incoming text is what initiates the activity.</p>

  • dan188

    08 January, 2019 - 1:11 pm

    <p>my only issue with google assistant is that more services I use are Alexa only IE siriusxm I think google needs to. open u more</p>

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