Over 500 million people use Assistant monthly: Google

Google said its digital assistant is used by more than 500 million people every month. Depending on your perspective, that is 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, 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 is not available with some of these products, or that many people are not using the service.

Either way, the numbers give a glimpse into the war between Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to get their voice-controlled digital assistants in front of as many people as possible.