it's really hard to say that the AOL data released is representative of the larger search search habits of the Internet population as a whole, not only because it hewed strictly to AOL users, but also because it included only AOL users who were using the AOL client software -- an even more rarefied sub-species of the online animal, and one that is typically (although probably with some exceptions) a bit more novice, a bit more unsophisticated, and/or a bit less familiar with all the untended parts of the WWW outside the garden walls of AOL's manicured interface. that's not to say that they don't use the Web, but if their home base and persistent point of departure is always the AOL client, they are unique in so many ways that make it hard to extrapolate.
Slashdot Mirror
it's really hard to say that the AOL data released is representative of the larger search search habits of the Internet population as a whole, not only because it hewed strictly to AOL users, but also because it included only AOL users who were using the AOL client software -- an even more rarefied sub-species of the online animal, and one that is typically (although probably with some exceptions) a bit more novice, a bit more unsophisticated, and/or a bit less familiar with all the untended parts of the WWW outside the garden walls of AOL's manicured interface. that's not to say that they don't use the Web, but if their home base and persistent point of departure is always the AOL client, they are unique in so many ways that make it hard to extrapolate.