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Chrome Browser Usage Artificially Boosted, Says Microsoft
bonch writes "Chrome was recently called the world's no.1 browser, but Microsoft is accusing the source, StatCounter, of using flawed methodology. When a user enters a search in Chrome, the browser preloads an invisible tab not shown to the user, and these were being counted by StatCounter. Net Applications, another usage tracking group, ignores these invisible tabs and reports IE at 54%, Firefox at 20.20%, and Chrome at 18.85%." Whereas the saturation of MSIE is totally organic, right?
StatCounter does not tally pre-loaded pages.
It's not only Chrome - they try to inflate Google+ user count also, by counting every single Google service - including search engine and YouTube - as part of Google+. Then they boast user counts of like 100 million while the users have been nowhere near Google+ itself and it's perfectly clear there's not that kind of users. It's part of their marketing.
It seems like kind of a quick jump otherwise.
...Lynx rules all the browsers anyway.
Chrome automatically loads some of the links on the page you are reading in the background, so that when you click on one of those links, it already has the page mostly ready. So when the user reads one page, "the web" sees several pages being loaded.
Slashdot 10 years later, what has changed. Microsoft still the evil empire, Google still the darling startup, and nobody can be bothered to read the article when it's about evil M$.
What's an "invisible tab?" I don't want to read the article, but I don't understand how it inflates the actual number of chrome users
I think you said it all right there...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Did you look at the article? Geolocation weighting? It's bloody five pages.
I don't come to Slashdot for the articles :)
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Stats from a website which has mostly Canadian viewers:
Unique Users for the past 30 days
1.IE 66,554 42.21%
2.Safari 37,213 23.60%
3.Firefox 20,703 13.13%
4.Chrome 14,552 9.23%
5.Android 3,736 2.37%
*source: google analytics
Could it be that Chrome is on every Android platform and Android is on a lot of things? Many more pieces of hardware than Windows Mobile. Although I am a little dubious of the claim that "Chrome is #1" the growth makes a lot of sense where it has nothing to do with "hidden tabs" but that the installbase has exploded.
One could argue that the bundling was the "behind-the-scenes shenanigans to inflate their numbers," particularly given common browser bundling practice at the time (also known as not doing it). That argument would be much weaker in today's environment, where everyone bundles a browser, but Microsoft's decision was not made in that environment.
The Wikimedia browser stats pretty much match the StatCounter ones: 25.36% IE, 24.99% Chrome.
Note that Wikimedia is (a) a top-10 site with a broad general international readership (b) a charity with no direct interest in the question of "which browser wins?" but only in knowing the actual answers, so as to serve the readers.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The method in which a user ends up with a browser - by default or by choice, etc - is a whole different topic. What is important for web developers are accurate statistics. I agree with MS on this one, because it sounds like the stats were quite skewed by page preloading, etc. How people ended up with IE doesn't change who is actually using what. I'm trying to figure out why Firefox and Chrome usage is so low on iPad devices - it's quite an anomaly - but again, that's a whole different topic.
(to save those who don't grasp subtle sarcastic humor, my comment about iPad browsers is totally tongue-in-cheek)
Better known as 318230.
You can't use a browser without adblock these days and retain sanity. And unless you decide to throw away your privacy, you'll block trackers like Google Analytics or StatCounter.
So join me on the mission: drive apparent Firefox usage stats to 0.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser_market_share#Summary_table
In the data for April, only Net Applications put MSIE significant ahead of Google Chrome. The other 3 sources, on average, give *lower* usage of MSIE than Stat Counter.
A tangentially related question: Has anyone gotten in trouble with violating their employer's Acceptable Use Policy due to browser preloading / precaching? Often, in search results or even certain news sites there are outbound links to places I'd never visit from work. But if Chrome (or even Firefox) is clicking those links behind my back, my IP address is in a corporate log somewhere as having "visited" that site, isn't it?
How are these preload/precache "hits" distinguished from normal hits? Obviously, if some of the sites are filtering these out, there's some way to tell them apart. At the same time, if the "hits" were noticeably different, there's always the chance the webserver would serve up different pages based on this difference.
Program Intellivision!
That's nothing, Facebook has this habit of paying people to troll Google on Slashdot!
Possibly not in this case. The person who posted the story was bonch, who appears to post questionable stuff in favor of MS and against Google.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
>> I'm on a poor connection and doing stuff like that slows down the whole internet.
Yes... I noticed the entire internet slow down when you searched earlier. Please stop.
>> It's also dubious that Google boasts their market share with these inflated numbers...
So you think it's doubtful or questionable that Google does this? So do I.
>> And what if one of the search results contain ...
OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!
At least you earned your shill paycheck today.