Gmail's Android app is 300+ MB with 5B+ downloads. What the actual fuck!!

Why does an email client have to be of that size?

And how are downloads tracked? Every time someone installs the app counter goes brrrr?

Fuck Google anyway.

"And how are downloads tracked? Every time someone installs the app counter goes brrrr?"

Isn't that how it works?

@N00bPancakes shouldn't the count be unique to each Id?

I can write a script which installs and uninstalls the app in 100 different phones and boost my count to Millions in a short span.

How legit would that be? This is very much like purchasing likes but for devs?

@Floydimus

Maybe it is unique?

Even the YouTube counter counts multiple views by same user, but it does have abuse protection.

@N00bPancakes 5 Billion unique downloads? 😨

@theabbie Google is one fucked up company.

@Floydimus

Still could be 5B ... and unique.

Doesn't mean it really equates to humans doing the thing.

That's not easy to manage.... and beyond a certain number I'm not sure the number matters.

@N00bPancakes just 5B unique Android installations is beyond me.

If not humans then what?

Yes, after a certain count it meaningless but still fascinating.

Truth is dead.

@Floydimus

Well according to this article from 2019 there are 2.5 B active android devices.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/...

That doesn't account for discarded devices that are no longer functioning.

Granted I've no idea how google came up with that number but just assuming it is accurate:

5B seems ... in the neighborhood of 'could be sorta accurate in some way'.

It’s feature packed and contains a full installation of the most commonly used modules on Linux alongside it

Since you know the idea that an smtp client with some encryption and some very basic web layouts and their guys would as you put it not explain the size at all

@Root wait.. when did you reach 75K? Lol

Numbers are haunting me today. I need sleeeeeep.

@N00bPancakes this gets more interesting. Let me check the count for Facebook.

@Floydimus 🤷🏻‍♀️

@MadMadMadMrMim why would they pack Linux modules in an email client built for Android?

@N00bPancakes Facebook has 5B+ installations and their shitty app which literally spies and captures all your data is just 42 MB.

I need to master the numbers now.

@Floydimus I meant what would be in packages sorry typo
Like shared libraries or their own python interpreter or what have you

When you are big enough, it does not matter what you do.
People will just install it because “yeah I use gmail”. For MOST people gmail is NOT email account, it’;s gmail and there is no choice except use gmail app.
Really. It’s that bad.
Tomorrow Google can name ANY app “Google” and promote it via store an it doesn’t matter wwhat app does, it will have millions of installs.

@NoToJavaScript tech giants
Hoorah
Competition unfriendly economy hoozah!

It's around 50 MB for me. Maybe your size includes emails or there's some other problem with the installation. If you have installed Gmail as a system app, you probably have both some old version and updates on your phone. I have only one version of the app on my phone.

@Floydimus

That facebook number makes me think that gmail number is somewhat consistent and ... might mean / be close to a meaningful thing ... in some way.

@Floydimus you know this used to be a motivator of sorts
Not this specific scenario
Because well nothing I want here but moved somewhere better quickly
Amusingly wrote the statements people are mimicking from real frustrations and experiences

Living a life in short
Where is life now ?

Literally nothing motivates normal people to deal with fucked up assholes in their midst except the extras they want
My problem is is I found out what the assholes actually are and what they’re up to
Really diminishes a persons motivation while they busily erase themselves and everyone else trying to force time into a loop

@electrineer why would my email size reflect on Play store?

@N00bPancakes exactly why I checked it, to confirm that Google isn't manipulating.

@MadMadMadMrMim you seem frustrated today.

@Floydimus why would I not be ? Everyone’s a liar
And not a one of them seem to be benefiting from their lies
And I cannot simply guiltlessly live during this time period because people revealed their true colors gradually and were just waiting for the economy to hit the reset button and all these dumb awful jackasses to start screwing everything up all over again while trying to perfect their lie

@MadMadMadMrMim @Floydimus creative dead end that’s what we reached

Something seems wrong with the size

24.69MB on my phone, but that's shown as update size (I already have it), so that might be why the number is different.

Bro give them a break. 20 MB is for actual what you see on screen. Rest is telemetry and a AI model to send useful data to the NSA

@Berkmann18 @nibor @N00bPancakes @electrineer I think you all are right. The local storage is being considered as well.

@jassole lol my bad.

I have disabled Gmail app and the other unnecessary apps since the beginning. For email, I'm using outlook for Android. & It's awesome so far

300 MB is legit when you think about it. Since December they basically ship a whole browser's core with it to support funky HTML/CSS combinations on top of mobile client. Before that whole app was ~100 MB and ungoogled Chromium alone is 140 MB.

100 MB is still big for an e-mail client, I agree, but my guess is they use (and ship with) generic libraries for e.g. compression and encryption algorithms because it makes development cycle snappier.

@Xoka while I have disabled most apps, I am using Gmail as my email client.

But I'd admit that Outlook (web, mobile, and desktop), is much better than crappy Gmail.

@cprn the mystery has been solved, you can check my previous comment. But the dev cycle thing is new to be and interesting, yet again.