Looking at Google Play's most popular content over the past 5 years

Google Play has been around for five years now — a surprisingly long time — and to celebrate, Google has compiled multiple lists of the top five pieces of content in each part of the store. Games, apps, songs, albums, movies and books are the big categories here, and the lists round out just about as you'd expect.

Top installed games

  1. Candy Crush Saga
  2. Subway Surfers
  3. Temple Run 2
  4. Despicable Me
  5. Clash of Clans

Top installed apps (not including pre-installed apps)

  1. Facebook
  2. Facebook Messenger
  3. Pandora Radio
  4. Instagram
  5. Snapchat

Top selling songs

  1. Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud
  2. Lorde - Royals
  3. Taylor Swift - Blank Space
  4. Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk
  5. Pharrell Williams - Happy

Top selling albums

  1. Adele - 25
  2. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP2 (Deluxe)
  3. Taylor Swift - 1989
  4. Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
  5. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly

Top selling movies

  1. The Interview
  2. Frozen
  3. Deadpool
  4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  5. Guardians of the Galaxy

Top selling books

  1. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E L James
  2. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
  3. A Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin
  4. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
  5. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

Do any of the top charts stand out to you? Everything seems about as you'd think if you were asked blind what would top the list on the Play Store. If you want to download any of this top content for yourself, Google Play has a handy page with all of it in one place.

Andrew Martonik

Andrew was an Executive Editor, U.S. at Android Central between 2012 and 2020.