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StatCounter Blasts Microsoft's Claim About IE Still Being the Number 1 Browser

Posted by Soulskill on from the browser-election-recount dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Do you remember when Microsoft tried to claim that Internet Explorer was still the most-used browser by accusing StatCounter of using a flawed methodology? Well, StatCounter has just posted a response that walks through a number of errors and omissions in Microsoft's reasoning. They (rather politely) explain the importance of sample size, discuss the value of page view counts versus unique visitor counts, and explain the difference between their methodology and that of Net Applications."

2 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who cares by sexconker · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Even if you think of this (as another commenter has it) as a "unique workflow", I think it misses an even greater source of error in NetApplication's approach. Consider:

    - My grandma uses IE as preloaded on her Windows PC and goes to, say, Gmail (yes, at least I got her off Hotmail :) once a day to get her cat pictures. She's counted as a single unique visitor by NetApp.
    - I go to Gmail with Chrome in the morning and live on it all day, loading hundreds if not thousands of pages during that time. Despite that, I'm _still_ counted as a single unique visitor by NetApp. Even though the "eyeball time" (the real "browser usage") between me and grandma is vastly different.

    I think the "single user" metric has an inherent biased towards low-usage, unsophisticated users - the ones most likely not to have replaced IE as loaded on their systems. So it makes sense (not even counting the geo-weighting issues) that they'd have IE's share much higher than anyone else's. Though no single approach is perfect, that's why I think of the two StatCounter's is netter. (And frankly it's always been more in line with other metrics - like the Wikimedia stats - that seem unbiased and cut a wide swath of the Net. NetApplications has always been the outlier.)

    No, idiot.
    The single user metric has a bias toward counting single fucking users.
    You don't get two votes just because you care more. You don't get two tallies in the singer-user metric because you use more. You are a single user.

  2. Re:OK, so you're both full of it by sexconker · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Welcome to Slashdot.
    If you're not alternating between sucking on Google's dick and slurping up Apple's putrid pink trench, you must be astro turfing.