Google said Thursday that its Google+ social network now has 90 million users, up from 40 million in October.
Engagement is also growing, Google CEO Larry Page said during a fourth-quarter earnings call. More than 60 percent of Google+ users engage with the service daily and 80 percent engage weekly, he said.
Google has shipped a new Google+ feature every day since the network's June debut, Page continued. This week, for example, the service added support for automatic video posts via Webcam, eliminating the need to upload the clip to YouTube, as well as the ability to start a Google+ conversation directly from search results.
Page stressed that the notion of identity within Google+ is very important and said "it's an example of how we can make all our products different by understanding people." Google took some heat recently for its "Search plus Your World" update, which taps into Google+ to deliver personalized social results. That prompted consumer groups to accuse Google of favoring results from its own network over the results of competitors. Despite the controversy, however, Page said Google plans to include "more social data in search" in the future.
Page declined to comment on where Google+ membership might be a year from now, but he said the search giant is seeing a "tremendous" number of sign-ups on a daily basis.
'Mind Boggling' Android
Page also described the growth of Android as "mind boggling." There are now 250 million Android devices in the wild, up 50 million from November, he said. Page reiterated that more than 700,000 Android devices are activated on a daily basis, with 3.7 million activations on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25 alone.
With those devices, users have now downloaded more than 11 billion apps from the Android Market. "Wow," Page said.
That, Page said, will help with Google's efforts to further monetize Android, though he acknowledged that many of those downloads were for free apps.
"I think we are in the very early stages of monetization for a number of our new products and Android is one of those," Page said. "We do make money from search on ads [and] we're a very strong business on mobile."
"There's a lot of potential for us to make money on Android and you'll see us increase that over time," though it's hard to provide exact details on exactly how that might happen, Page continued.
When asked about Google's plan to purchase Motorola Mobility, which the EU will rule on by Feb. 13, Page reiterated that Motorola will remain a separate entity and bid for Android devices "like any other OEM" once the deal is done.
"I think we've done a great job managing our partner ecosystem [and] we'll continue to do that" with Motorola, Page said.
Page, who took over as CEO in April, also talked about his decision to clean house and shut down a number of services during 2011, from Google Buzz to Knol. Streamlining services "means we can double down on the really big bets like Android, Chrome, Gmail, display, and YouTube," Page said. "Those big bets are really paying off."
On the finance front, Google reported revenue of $10.58 billion in the fourth quarter—the first time the search giant topped the $10 billion mark and a 25 percent increase from the year before. Earnings also landed at $2.71 billion, up from $2.54 billion a year before.