(CNN) -- "App" has been a computing term for a lot longer than five years. But, on July 10, 2008, it began its journey to becoming a household word. That's when Apple, a year after launching the iPhone, introduced its App Store to the world. The online marketplace launched with 500 apps, mostly for established Web companies such as Facebook, eBay and Yelp. Today, it has more than 850,000. And, a couple of months ago, it passed a mind-boggling threshold, marking the 50 billionth app to be downloaded. Apple can no longer claim proprietary ownership of apps, those mini-programs that continue to push the boundaries of what a mobile phone can do. Google launched its own app store, now called Play, less than a year after Apple. Today, it's on a path toward surpassing Apple's number of downloads.
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Apple's App Store arrived five years ago
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Users have downloaded more than 50 billion iOS apps
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Casual game "Angry Birds" is the store's top-selling app ever
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Facebook leads most-popular list of free apps, followed by Pandora
By 2008 @placeholder already had become a popular Web-streaming service, letting users seed their own personal radio stations with bands or songs they liked.