Facebook has a way to make people use its services, whether they like it or not. The recent decision to decouple Messenger from the main Facebook app and making it a necessary download to chat with friends is reaping the benefits for the company. Facebook Messenger has become the most popular app on the Play Store in the last couple of days and is seeing massive downloads.

Messenger has become third non Google app to accumulate over 500 million downloads on the Play Store. In case you’re wondering, the other two are owned by Facebook as well — Facebook and WhatsApp.

Although it opens up plenty of opportunities for Facebook to monetize Messenger, it sad to see that the company had to use such tactics to force people into downloading its app. Although Messenger isn’t the only chat platform on Android, given how much Facebook has become a part of our lives, people are forced to use the app since there’s no other alternative to chat with your Facebook friends on your smartphone anymore.

Facebook Messenger – Android