Slashdot Mirror
How Company Employees Use The Web
An anonymous reader submits "VisitorVille Intelligence has released information on how employees of several large companies use the web based on their monitoring of thousands of websites. Presumably using IP address blocks, they group company employees together to produce some interesting facts and figures: Microsoft employees use Google for their searches 66% of the time, but MSN Search only 20% of the time, and Firefox is their second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer 6's whopping 98.76% share. Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time
and 21% use a Mozilla or Firefox browser. Apple employees like Google best and 68% use Safari.
91% of Internap employees use Mozilla or Firefox, Deutsche Telekom AG employees are the biggest users of Linux, and 39% of Sun Microsystems employees use SunOS. Other groups of interest to Slashdot readers include: The White House, the United Nations, The New York Times, Red Hat, and IBM."
But most are smart enough to use it safely, unlike your average Windows/IE user.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time
That means when the employees actually use what they make... it must be good.
Employees are restricted to what software is installed on the servers. If it were up to me i would you Opera, but it isn't. Slashdot != FF users And besides, is there really any point to visit /. when you get back home using your fav browser just to rack up stats?
when people see that IE is used 98% of the time by MS, it's becasue MS doesn't give them enough freedom, but when google employees use google 100% of the time it's becasue it is a better product?
Personal, I have started find google to be less and less useful. I actualy used HOTBOT last week to get result Google wasn't returning.
And yes, I was as surprised as you are the hotbot is still around.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeh, not using windows would be like losing the "no-rubber sex with $2 hookers" habit.
You can't install shit.
You're not supposed to be able to. Thats the point.
It's not worth the trouble, if you know what you're doing
If you know what you're doing, its no trouble.
Back in 1998, I was working for the Java division of Sun, where we relied on the "Intranet" long before it was a word. Most documents, both internal, and external, were in HTML. Which makes a really good web browser really important. And yet we were stuck with the Solaris port of Netscape 4.7. Buggy, sluggish, screwed up my X-Windows palette, crashed once an hour -- and it didn't provide headers and footers for printouts! I was working as a tech writer, reading and producing a lot of documents, so this was a major crimp in my productivity. I finally broke the No Microsoft Rule and installed IE for Solaris on my workstation.
That's all the brand loyalty you can expect from techies -- give them something that works, or they're gone.
When the editors' preferred platform (hint: Linux) isn't an embarassing minority.
"You're not supposed to be able to. Thats the point."
No that's not the point. I can install software both on my linux system an on my mac without being root. I just install it into my home directory.
On the mac if I want to install it for everybody I drag the icon to the applications folder. The Mac then asks me for the username and the password of an admin user and it's done.
run as does not even compare. Sorry.
evil is as evil does
Why not code to standards so that all browsers get the same interface?
evil is as evil does
I don't think most people here think that the developers at MS are evil (well maybe some do, but they're just zealots). What most people have a problem with is the company's business practices. Usually those are not decided by the software developers; they're set out by the upper managers and businessmen at MS.
It is a well known fact that there are a lot of smart people working for MS in the research and development groups, and that MS generally is smart enough to treat those people quite well. But unfortunately it is also well known that MS's business practices are illegal in most countries, and most would say quite unethical.
Many would also argue that despite the many smart people working there, much of the software sold to consumers simply sucks. And I believe the business side is mostly to blame for this. Only Windows and Office really make the company any money, so the business is built around selling those two cash cows, and then dominating every other area in computing they can get their hands and somehow tying it to those two products. There is little motive to come out with anything truly innovative. For all I know, you developers at MS might be creating the worlds greatest applications (and maybe a version of IE that doesn't suck), but the consumers won't see it for a while, or may never see some of it at all.
Now I'm not saying MS's business people are the dumb ones in the company. In fact, many business people could claim that MS must have smart managers to be pursuing this strategy. One look at their balance sheets probably makes it pretty clear what they have to do on the business side. To stray their focus away from the only 2 products making them money would be suicide.
Maybe one day the business side will not be able to rely entirely on Office and Windows, and therefore will have incentive to act differently. Hopefully (for them) they'd be able to make great use of their researchers and software developers at that point. And maybe, if at that point they learned to play nice with others, I'd stop hating them. Given enough years, even the "MS is evil" zealots might come around. Or maybe I'll quit dreaming and go back to work supporting the multi-OS crapshoot that is my world.