Google uses Android army in Plus drive Google is seeking to co-opt an army of hundreds of millions of Android smartphone users in its latest attempt to draw people away from Facebook and on to its Google Plus social network. The search company said on Tuesday that it would tie the Android operating system, used on the majority of the world's smartphones, more closely to Google Plus to encourage people to upload their photos to the social networking service automatically. The move, coming in the week that Twitter began an investor roadshow for its initial public offering, marks the latest attempt by Google to exploit the massive reach of its most popular services as it seeks to make up for a slow start at Google Plus, which was launched two years ago. Android was installed on 74 per cent of smartphones shipped during the second quarter of this year, according to research firm IDC, giving Google a massive launch pad for other services that are distributed as part of the software. In another attempt to put Google Plus in front of a large audience, Google will turn on a new commenting system on YouTube in early November that is tied to the network, according to a person close to the company. The new comment system, which was announced last month, would require anyone who comments on YouTube to use a Google Plus account, a move that the company hopes will draw discussion away from Facebook and Twitter and increase the amount of content on Google. Google has already tried ways of using its other services to stir up interest for the social networking service, for instance requiring people who want to sign up for Gmail to have Google Plus accounts. But although that has created a large nominal audience for the service, it has not led users to create enough content to deepen engagement with the network. Vic Gundotra, the Google executive in charge of social networking, claimed that recent months had already brought a big pick-up in interest, with the number of monthly active users on Google Plus rising from 390m in May to 540m, and the number who look at content in their Google Plus "stream" increasing from 190m to 300m. Google Plus has already attracted interest from photographers, thanks to its storage of pictures in high resolution. Seeking to build on that, Google on Tuesday announced a range of new features for its photo service, such as an auto-adjustment to improve the quality of images. People already upload 1.5bn photos a week to Google Plus, according to the search company. That compares with the most recently announced number of 350m a week from Instagram, Facebook's mobile app, and the 2.5bn that Facebook users add to their personal pages there. The new Google Plus photo gallery will appear on all new versions of Android starting with the one released in July, the company said.