Google says over 500 million people use its Assistant monthly

Google Assistant is displayed at the company's booth at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Internet search giant said its digital assistant is used by more than 500 million people every month. — Bloomberg

Google said its digital assistant is used by more than 500 million people every month. Depending on your perspective, that’s either a win for Google, or a big miss.

On the one hand, having the voice-controlled technology on over half a billion devices far outstrips main rival Amazon.com Inc, which said last year that more than 100 million gadgets had been sold with its Alexa digital assistant. However, Google’s Android operating system runs on roughly 2.5 billion devices. That suggests the Google Assistant either isn’t available with some of these products, or that many people aren’t using the service.