Google's December 2002 Browser Statistics

raybirks · Post by **raybirks** » January 14th, 2003, 6:38 pm

The latest numbers at Google show a decided upturn in the "Other" browser category.

By my estimate of the graph (which shows no specific numbers), "Other" browsers accounted for 12% of the December 2002 usage.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/z ... dec02.html

mesostinky · Post by **mesostinky** » January 14th, 2003, 7:14 pm

That's the first good news I've seen from Zeitgeist in a long time. While its by no means official, I've still watched it month after month hoping to see a real upward trend. That spike is most likely Gecko based browsers. I will be very interested in seeing next months statistics. I do think its about time they start tracking Gecko browsers and stop tracking Netscape 4.x.

Gunnar · Post by **Gunnar** » January 15th, 2003, 5:40 am

That is definitely great news. Even if the increase is not all due to Gecko-based browsers, it is good to see that IE marketshare is eroding (think of the IE has 98% marketshare numbers), at least as far as Google is concerned.

I agree with mesostinky that it is time to stop showing Netscape 4 and instead replace it with the most popular "other browsers". Bunching all Gecko-based browsers together would be a good start, but I am also curious about how well Opera browsers are doing.

nicubunu · Post by **nicubunu** » January 15th, 2003, 6:13 am

me to post:

i'm also curious, this increase can be the effect of Mozilla becoming better and better, the release of Netscape 7.01, the Phoenix boom or the release of Opera 7 newest beta

spark · Post by **spark** » January 15th, 2003, 6:17 am

Email google about showing gecko based browsers. they most likely won't reply, but at least they will know it's wanted

(i think the addresses are press@google.com or barry@google.com , but check these for yourself).

jayeshsh · Post by **jayeshsh** » January 15th, 2003, 9:24 am

Actually, it seems more like a jump to 24% for "Other" browsers in December, 2002! That's more than double the amount in March, 2001. I posted the findings and marked up image on my website.
<a href="http://www.moztips.com/index.php?id=28">http://www.moztips.com/index.php?id=28</a>

If my eyes are somehow not deceiving me - or I have not made a stupid mistake, this is amazing news!

Regards,

- Jay

Crosma · Post by **Crosma** » January 15th, 2003, 10:19 am

Seems to me graph y-axis goes from 0% to 50%, not 0% to 100%. The percentages add up to about 200% otherwise. The increments are 5%, not 10%.

mikecop · Post by **mikecop** » January 15th, 2003, 10:47 am

Is there a bigger image available, the image they have is really small and difficult to read.

Anyways, i think this is good. Google has a large enough and diverse enough user based to make that stats authoritative enough.

There was a post here eariler asking about stats of Mozilla.org and Mozillazine.org. I am also interested in that. But a wider view like the one with google is better.

spark wrote:Email google about showing gecko based browsers. they most likely won't reply, but at least they will know it's wanted

I think this is important that google start showing Mozilla or Gecko . We should send email to them as spark said. Or should we actually file a bug to "Tech Evangelism"? If google shows Mozilla/Gecko, that would definite help promoting Gecko based browsers and make a seal approval of the importance of the Mozilla browser in the browser market.

potatoe · Post by **potatoe** » January 15th, 2003, 11:50 am

Crosma wrote:Seems to me graph y-axis goes from 0% to 50%, not 0% to 100%. The percentages add up to about 200% otherwise. The increments are 5%, not 10%.

I think it's an arbitrary scale, based on the highest benchmark, not on total percentages.

So rather than say 'other' is 25% or 12% of total, 'other' is ~1/5 of MSIE6, and ~1/3 of MSIE5 and ~1/10 of MSIE altogether. Excellent!

raybirks · Post by **raybirks** » January 15th, 2003, 11:59 am

To clarify how I came up with my 12% figure for "Other" browsers:

There are no numbers indicated, merely lines of 'usage.' Since the market share has to add up to 100%, I decided to measure the total distances to each line's end point from the X-axis.

I used Mozilla's Print Preview mode (File/Print Preview) then expanded the scale to 175% and printed that one page.

Then I broke out my age-old clear-plastic Picas/Points ruler (what does one call this thing, anyway?) and used the Pica measurement for each line's end point.

The distance in pica tic-marks (6 marks per pica) to each line:

IE6: 68
IE5.5: 24
IE5.0: 25
Other: 17
NS4.x: 5
IE4.0: 4
---------------
Total: 143

17 is 11.9% of 143, or 12%.

By the way, this shows that non-Microsoft browsers have a 15.4% market share, the highest at Google since October 2001 (when it was 16.4%).

The highest this non-Microsoft figure has been at Google was its first published number (that I have found) in January 2001, when it was 25%. ("Other" was then 10%, and IE6 had not yet been released.)

schapel · Post by **schapel** » January 15th, 2003, 12:04 pm

mikecop wrote:Is there a bigger image available, the image they have is really small and difficult to read.

Google allows you to use their Zeitgeist information, as long as you attribute it to them. Go ahead and take the graphic, scale it up to twice as big, add some lines for the 5%, 10%, etc. percentage marks, and put it on the web!

Sander · Post by **Sander** » January 15th, 2003, 2:38 pm

Hmm, Mac dropped to 4% again after having reached 5% last month... And windows 98 is still the most used OS. (Which is IMO a good thing - people shouldn't mindlessly upgrade their Microsoft products; and at least 98 didn't yet have the integration with all the other silly MS programs).

But very hopeful this development. Now to see if it'll hold next month...

dakboy · Post by **dakboy** » January 15th, 2003, 5:19 pm

nicubunu wrote: or the release of Opera 7 newest beta

Doesn't Opera still ID itself in the UA string by default as IE though?

mfk · Post by **mfk** » January 15th, 2003, 5:54 pm

Yes, but it will still say Opera at the end of the string.

schapel · Post by **schapel** » January 15th, 2003, 6:05 pm

raybirks wrote:By the way, this shows that non-Microsoft browsers have a 15.4% market share, the highest at Google since October 2001 (when it was 16.4%).

No, this graph does not show market share. It shows what percentage of page hits on Google came from which browser -- this is the same as browser usage share on Google. Usage share on other sites will be different. It does not show that more people are using "other" browsers -- just that those users are going to Google more often than IE and Netscape 4 users.

Google's December 2002 Browser Statistics

Google's December 2002 Browser Statistics

Hmmm...

authoratative

Re: Hmmm...

Re: authoratative