New York, Aug 20 (IANS): Although it initially faced backlash by people, the new Facebook Messenger app has been downloaded over 500 million times on Android-based devices, reports Google Play Store.

The Messenger app earlier received poor reviews from its users, with most criticising the popular social networking site for forcing them to download a separate app to access their messages.

There were some users who were worried about the privacy implications of the Messenger app.

Replying to some of the queries, Facebook said: "Our goal is to focus development efforts on making messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences."

Facebook has said it will move messages out of the main Facebook app, claiming that messaging with the new messenger is faster and more reliable.

No app has yet been downloaded over 1 billion times, according to Google.