Google: G Suite now has 2 billion users
Google's office productivity suite, G Suite, now has two billion monthly active users, having passed that milestone at the end of last year.
G Suite boss Javier Soltero shared the number with Axios but didn't say how many of the two billion are paid users and users of products beyond Gmail. In 2018, Google revealed that Gmail had 1.5 billion users.
"That's a staggering number," Soltero boasted. "These products have incredible reach. Changing the way people work is something we are uniquely positioned to do."
The milestone firms up G Suite's position as the main rival to Microsoft Office 365. However, Microsoft still dominates the commercial market.
G Suite includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Sheets, Drive, Hangouts, and Meet.
When Google raised prices for G Suite at the beginning of last year, it said it had four million businesses using G Suite in 2018. Google charges $6 per month per user for G Suite Basic, $12 a month per user for G Suite Business, and $25 per user a month for G Suite Enterprise.
Microsoft said last year that Office 365 commercial monthly active users hit 200 million.
Soltero joined Google last year from Microsoft, where he had headed up Cortana, Office, and Outlook during his tenure. He joined Microsoft in 2014 through the company's acquisition of mobile mail Acompli, which Soltero founded. Acompli became Microsoft's Outlook Mobile app.
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley noted at his departure from Microsoft that he had had a big impact, "sometimes by acting as the bull in the china shop, in terms of shaking up long-standing ways of doing things inside the company".
Soltero told Axios that at Google he doesn't feel the need to be as outspoken.
The G Suite exec says users can expect Gmail's AI-powered Smart Compose – smart text suggestions – feature to expand beyond Gmail and Docs. Google only last month rolled out Smart Compose for Docs but exclusively to its paid-for G Suite users, tempting customers with Google's machine learning to boost productivity.
He also suggested Google's separate apps could be improved through better integration.