Sixty-five percent of users were not signing into their Google account in Messages, a requirement to access premium features like Gemini integration, Backup & Restore, and most new features.

Research and Data Science partners identified issues preventing higher sign-in rates: (1) Long onboarding flow (2) Understandability of the sign-in page (3) Privacy concerns.

Working with Privacy, Legal, and UX writers across orgs, I led the effort to condense the onboarding flow from five screens to one. This simplification provided greater clarity for users and additional privacy controls.

By simplifying onboarding to a single screen with clearer language and making Google sign-in an opt-out rather than an opt-in, the following metrics improved:

• Google Account sign-ins among daily active users rose from 35% to 92%
• +52% improvement in the number of users who uploaded a profile picture
• +530M more Android devices are now Reachable via a verified phone number (80% of Messages users now Reachable)
• Increased eligible Gemini AI users in Messages by 50%

Furthermore, the additional privacy controls reinforced the privacy story and helped garnered positive press:

• Google Messages gets a new feature that makes it easier to keep private - Android Authority
• Google Messages could soon fix this big profile discovery privacy oversight - Android Police