Play Movies & TV Becomes Latest Google App To Reach The 500 Million Downloads Milestone

Google’s apps, alongside Facebook’s, remain the only Android apps to reach over 500 million users. Some of the tech giant’s offerings, such as Gmail and YouTube, have even managed more than a billion downloads.

Now Play Movies & TV has become the company’s latest app to join the former category. On Google Play, it resides in the 500,000,000 – 1,000,000,000 range.

This is a significant achievement for Play Movies, a brand that has only really been around since the Android Market turned into the Play Store not much more than a couple of years ago. While the service has expanded into many countries, TV shows are only available in a handful.  The selection of content also varies with location, giving users in some places more reason to dive into the app than people living elsewhere.

The inability to downloaded DRM-free versions of purchased movies bums me out, but that’s a restriction that’s placed on Google’s competitors as well. This really limits how often I turn to the service, but Play Movies remains the fastest way to rent a relatively new movie on an Android device. That alone makes it worth a look every now and then.