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."
It's nice to see slashdot employees don't do anything on the internet :) Full company list is here by the way.
And IBM is using Windows exclusively?
I wonder why it doesn't show the top 5/10 visited sites.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
85% of Slashdot users use windows, and 60% still use internet explorer.
Well, only if myself, about half of my immediate colleagues, the Linux Technology Center people, all the people on the internal linux mailing lists and probably quite a few others don't count :-)
Given that one data point looks a bit borked, I'm wondering about the rest of the data...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
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.
Either VisitorVille responds to slashdotting by saying it doesn't have data, or some companies were *really* fast with their privacy injunctions.
Kevin Fox
97% of NY Times employees use this to log into the NY Times website
only 39% of Sun employees use Sun OS??? That seems awfully low to me. Granted, I am sure they do use Windows and Linux (at least their version) for various and sunder things around the office but 39%.....there is something very unusual about that.
If you can't preach to the choir there, how are you going to preach to the masses??
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
...that 100% of Microsoft employees use sol.exe.
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
I admitted just did a quick glance, but I didn't find their figures to be credible. I looked the company I work for, and it was listed as 100% Windows 2000 and 100% IE6.
However, we have a mix of Windows 2000, Sun Workstations, Linux machines, and more than a few Macintoshes. Our IT-supported browser is Netscape, not Internet Explorer. So I expected a little more diversity than what they're showing.
Also, their web site says they provide "company specific marketing information". Technically they are providing "market information" not "marketing information". There is a difference. "Market information" means just raw data (which is what they're providing). "Marketing information" means information that helps you make a decision: Should we avoid Flash because too few users at our site have it enabled? This is probably a nit-pick to many people, but for a company offering their research, the difference is nontrivial. The people whom they are targeting their information (besides people just curious for trivia) likely know the difference.
However, based on what I saw reported for my company, their data does not seem to accurately reflect what browsers/etc. people are actually using. Thus you could draw incorrect conclusions from their data.
Maybe that's why the information is free. You get what you pay for.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Regarding White House internet usage, the number one browser used from the Oval Office itself is that of Xbox Live.
When approached for comment, President Bush stated that he likes to relieve his stress by, "blowing the shit out of my constituency on Halo 2."
You'd think that slashdot users, being nerds, would use Firefox...
Dude, you're so last millenium...
Being a countercurrent techno freak implies using unfashionable tools. With all the positive press OSS gets, nerd-chic these days is to use IE.
abuse Slashdot so that our IP gets banned. When we track down the little bastard that did this...
95% of dynamic websites crumble within the first 15 comments. 50% after subscriber 'preview'. 5% when Cmdr Taco tries to click on the link before posting the story. 3% when Cmdr Taco tries to click on the link before posting the story. 2% when Cmdr Taco tries to click on the link before posting the story. 0% for Timothy; he's too busy ranting about the latest threat to "our rights online" to check the links.
Please help metamoderate.
When is slashdot going to post their server stats??
Yes, It would be a national security threat if terrorists knew "The White House" had cookies enabled and used IE.
Either that or they didnt want Bill Gates to know they were using *nix of some kind...
Just love that all 50 links in the submission are to the same /.ed server.
"Well, that link didn't work. Maybe this one..."
Wake up.
Firefox is their second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer 6's whopping 98.76% share.
:)
The second most popular behind 98.76%. Spin that any faster and you'd warp space-time.
The coolest voice ever.
I am very doubtful that Microsoft gives its employees much freedom, if any, to install the software of their choice.
Actually, pretty much all MS employees are admins on their own machines, and aren't particularly heavily restricted on what they can install, as long as it's legal and licenced.
P2P apps and their ilk are restricted, as well as most other stuff at the dodgy end of the spectrum, but no-one's formally restricted on what browser they can install. Except of course for the fact that intranet sites use windows integrated auth, and will tend to break in non-IE
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
I don't know how much this could account for, but at least a little.
Not too surprising, since our intranet apps often use tons IE only features. You can actually do some pretty nifty stuff in IE w/ XML/XSL, Javascript and DHTML. But I'll be damned if it doesn't break every standard in the book. :(
:}
Fascinating stats. Add me to the % that uses Mozilla.
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
well, kindof.. So they track every user who visits a site running their web bug and they *could* sell that information to anyone. :)
BTW I hope they're seeing lots of slashdot tornado's and riots at the moment...
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Nah. Microsoft employees use MSN search 99% of the time and Google 1% of the time. It's just that MSN search almost never finds anything useful so they don't click on the web sites found, hence nothing shows up in RefererLog files.
And 78.35% of statistics are fabricated.....
That 20% MSN search at Microsoft accounts for all the times Bill Gates or some other senior hovers over someones shoulder...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
At the company I work for (I'm not in the IT department of this one... shucks), we are forced to use IE because certian web applications we use for inter/intra department communication or data storage use asp or other activex controls.
::sigh::), and one of the IT guys just said "we would, but our web apps only work with IE." Ah well...
I asked specifically if I could get firefox installed (I don't have administration access on my desktop...
Personally, I prefer emacs.
Being a countercurrent techno freak implies using unfashionable tools. With all the positive press OSS gets, nerd-chic these days is to use IE.
Or, with regarding security, I just like to say, "I use IE because I like a challenge..."
Looks like their server is clobbered. MirrorDot has the mirrors.
~Jay
Dear Slashdotter,
/. effect has subsided. Here's the URL to bookmark: http://intelligence.visitorville.com
We're sorry we missed you.
In your infinite bounty, you have brought down our server.
Please check back once the
Thanks for your interest!
Robert Savage, Mayor, VisitorVille
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
Nope ! it has been dot-slashed !
./ effect has subsided. Here's the URL to bookmark: http://intelligence.visitorville.com
----
Dear Slashdotter,
We're sorry we missed you.
In your infinite bounty, you have brought down our server.
Please check back once the
Robert Savage, Mayor, VisitorVille
--
The only search engine they're using these days is Dice...
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Amen!
I use IE 5.01 from the original Win2k install (SPnone) with no security updates and:
A: Can't use the web worth shit.
B: Have lots of data for my upcoming book "How long does it take spyware to use 100% of my cpu 24x7" book.
Read my sig.
"Piter, too, is dead."
You can actually do some pretty nifty stuff in mozilla or khtml w/ XML/XSL, Javascript, DHTML and CSS.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Isn't it possible the browser of choice is artificially skewed towards IE?
I know a lot of users of other browsers spoof their user-agent to stop websites bitching about incompatible browsers.
Mine is set to send IE6.0 WinXP even though I am probably using Lynx on an iPod.
Equally, I imagine some Safari users are quite deliberately NOT spoofing anything to do a bit of evangelism.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
Well, for what it's worth there's a picture of President Bush (Dubya 43, not Poppy 41) with a PowerBook G3 (the Pismo model, I think), so we can imagine what he probably uses personally. I imagine that the executive office is primarily Windows and likely part Mac.
And for you blue folk, there's a picture that was in Time of John Kerry with a PowerBook G4, and Al Gore was evidently a Final Cut Pro enthusaist even before getting on the Apple board.
While I was working with a network admin at a local highschool, the entire district got banned from Slashdot for "abuse" that appeared we were trying to dos them or somesuch. Of course we just assumed it was the district, but as it turned out, all the schools in the province are connected to a massive network that provides bandwidth for every school. So every school in the province got banned, that's thousands of IT workers and whoever the heck knows how many geeky kids who were suddenly greated with a big red screen. It took a few emails to slashdot to finally get them to unblock it, and the problem as it turned out was some kind of a router looping explosion thing. Sorry, boring story and I forgot the details. And the point. But I got this far, so *submit button*
It's because even though they told the president he had a laptop, it was really an etch-a-sketch. It came with easier instructions:
Mr. President, if your laptop gets mess-i-fied or subliminalated hold it upside down and shake to reboot.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I recently hosted a mirror of an image in one of my posts that got around 800 hits. This was what my stats were for that.
Browser Version:
Firefox - 39.8%
MS IE - 19%
Curl - 14.1% (probably high because it was an image)
Unknown - 9.3%
Mozilla - 4.9%
Others - 4.4%
Opera - 3.1%
Safari - 2.8%
Konqueror - 1.9%
Netscape - 0.3%
OS Version:
Windows - 56.7%
Linux - 25%
Unknown - 13.9%
Macintosh - 3.6%
FreeBSD - 0.5%
Unknown Unix System - 0.1%
:) so dumm war ich dann doch nich, darin zu investieren.
.)
hey, but tell me a german ISP who gives you hints how to set up your MTA, and their only comment at the end of the FAQ is "if you screw up, well kick you out". treasure that.
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.
No kidding.
About a year and a half ago, I was part of the brain-dead "M$ is evil" hordes that populate this site. Then I visited Seattle, fell in love with the area, and someone I knew here happened to work at MS and started telling me about the environment and the people. So I decided to look there, along with other places.
It took 6 months to score an interview, and besides the fact that the 'legendarily tough' interview process was actually rather enjoyable as far as interviews go, I was downright impressed by everything I saw and the people I talked to.
Tomorrow I celebrate my 1 year mark with the company, and I hope to stick around for quite a while longer, as it is much more enjoyable than previous work, the people are smart and really want to put together great software, and I don't feel like a cog in some corporate machine.
It's not a perfect place, but I can definitely say that the bulk of people working here are smart, driven, and really wanting to make quality products. I haven't seen any of the evil that the Slashdot hordes seem to imply permeates the campus in Redmond.
Besides, I graduated from a bland grey cubicle in the middle of a cube farm to my own office which I'm filling with stuffed animals, various gadgets (glitter lamp, purple tube lights), and a pampasan chair. That right there gives a work environment tons of bonus points.
Oh, and I use Firefox and WinAMP on my machine, without any problems. Oh, and Visual Studio 2005 Beta, which I'll just say is 100 times more preferrable than when I was using XEmacs, gcc, and makefiles on Slowaris machines at my last job.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Perhaps Google's coming out with their own branded browser. Those clever tricksters, can't hide from us!
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.
Visual inspection of senior West Wing staffers shows that a high proportion of them run OSX laptops.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's