OS & Browser stats from Google

[minstrel]

Stats from visitors to Google as of September 2003:

[Narasinha]

The OS stats are similar to what I get on my personal site. Browser usage is a little different. I wish I knew exactly how they are parsing the USER_AGENT string to determine the browser. I've refined that part of my stats script several times. Opera is set to "masquerade" as Internet Explorer by default, but can be detected depending on how you parse the string.

It seems that very few besides us techies know that browsers other than Internet Explorer even exist. There will be a lot of people firing up new PCs this Christmas who never even heard of Netscape.

I understand that Microsoft has halted work on IE for a while. I suppose some of the problem is the issue with the *expletive deleted* over at Eolas. Let's just hope that the next IE (sometime in 2005 or 2006?) will be much better able to deal with HTML/XHTML/CSS standards.

[minstrel]

The OS stats are similar to what I get on my personal site. Browser usage is a little different. I wish I knew exactly how they are parsing the USER_AGENT string to determine the browser. I've refined that part of my stats script several times. Opera is set to "masquerade" as Internet Explorer by default, but can be detected depending on how you parse the string.

Yes, I understand about Opera - what impressed me overall is how stable the stats are - I didn't realize the Google ones were available until toniight but they are very close to what I've been seeing consistently on my own site for the past 3-4 years (in terms of trends) as well as other major sites who report them. And as I've said before, I think for smaller players like me they do have some implications re: "diminishing returns" cross-browser and occasionally cross-OS issues.

Let's just hope that the next IE (sometime in 2005 or 2006?) will be much better able to deal with HTML/XHTML/CSS standards.

Yes... I was just reading your latest post on standards - informative and helpful as always. Thanks.

[Narasinha]

What impressed me overall is how stable the stats are - I didn't realize the Google ones were available until toniight but they are very close to what I've been seeing consistently on my own site for the past 3-4 years (in terms of trends) as well as other major sites who report them. And as I've said before, I think for smaller players like me they do have some implications re: "diminishing returns" cross-browser and occasionally cross-OS issues.

Where exactly does Google publish the data for this?

I thought it interesting that IE 5.0 was on a straight decline as 5.5 was on the way up. When they were 50/50, 6.0 got public release and both 5.0 and 5.5 run almost exactly on the same decline afterwards. That "spike" up for 6.0 mirrored by a spike down for 5.0 seems strange, especially when they both "recover" immediately afterwards.

Let's just hope that the next IE (sometime in 2005 or 2006?) will be much better able to deal with HTML/XHTML/CSS standards.

Yes... I was just reading your latest post on standards - informative and helpful as always. Thanks.

Glad you liked it. I just hope I didn't get too long on that one. I didn't know quite where to stop!

[minstrel]

Where exactly does Google publish the data for this?

If you have the Google Toolbar 2.0 installed, in the left hand corner click on Google | Google Links | Zeitgeist. Otherwise, go to
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html.

[minstrel]

I thought it interesting that IE 5.0 was on a straight decline as 5.5 was on the way up. When they were 50/50, 6.0 got public release and both 5.0 and 5.5 run almost exactly on the same decline afterwards. That "spike" up for 6.0 mirrored by a spike down for 5.0 seems strange, especially when they both "recover" immediately afterwards.

That is curious - I just went backed and looked again - it happened early 2003. Maybe it's just anomaly - or, wild guess, maybe it's from people installing XP (which came with IE6), finding out it didn't run well on their hardware or that they didn't like going from the DOS base to the NT base, and returning to WIN98 or WinME and therefore the previous browser version? Less wild guess - a statistical anomaly.

[carbonize]

I on't trust stats anymore. I mean as our resident feng shui expert Narasinha has already said Opera ID's it's self as IE by default. So does google parse the string correctly? I'd love to know what the vertical scale is in to get an idea but I think the Others line should be higher.

My stats for November:

 27848	 94.8%	 Internet Explorer
   634	 2.2%	 Mozilla
   471	 1.6%	 Netscape
   334	 1.1%	 Opera
    32	 0.1%	 Konqueror
    19	 0.1%	 W3C HTML Validator
    11	 0%	 WebTV browser
     8	 0%	 Galeon
     7	 0%	 LibWWW
     3	 0%	 Phoenix
     2	 0%	 ANT Fresco
     1	 0%	 HTTrack (offline browser utility)
     1	 0%	 Links
     1	 0%	 Lynx
     1	 0%	 Viking
     1	 0%	 W3C CSS Validator
     1	 0%	 WebCollage (PDA/Phone browser)
     1	 0%	 Windows Media Player (media player)

Never realised media player was also a browser :-/

[matauri]

Personally I found IE6 unstable compared to 5.5. I much preferred running 5.5 with win 2K, I never crashed. Now with XP Pro & IE6....I seem to crash all the time. So I am figuring out how to wind back to 5.5. Maybe the fluctuations in those stats reflects people who felt the same way?

Dam shame that Firebird wasnt in there, or would it have been masked as just Mozilla? After having been introduced to it I cant see why any designer would use anything else !



Cindy

[carbonize]

Some sites ID Firebird as Netscape for some odd reason. Only seen 3 scripts that correctly identified it. I can definately see Firebird becoming the number 1 browser. Number 1 browser by choice that is not "oh my computer came with Internet Explorer so I thought thats all there was." Unfair market dominance me thinks. I think that Longhorn should come supplied with Firebird, IE, and Opera so that the people can chose which one they like and be aware that there is more to computers than the crap Microsoft makes.

[carbonize]

I just noticed on my list it says Phoenix. Now does it mean Firebird as Phoenix was what it was originally called or is that the browser that forced the to change names :-/


Unfortunately I'm at work so cannot check my scripts.