This last week was a good one for new browsers versions. In terms of global usage, IE 8 has just crossed IE 7 and Firefox 3.5 has just crossed Firefox 3. This won't show up in tomorrow's August report from Net Applications, because they average the whole month and for most of the month, the newer versions were still behind. Septeber's report should show the newer versions well ahead of the older versions (with the exception of IE 6 which still holds a several point lead over IE 8 and IE 7.)
August 2009 Archives
I've recently been bad-mouthing the browser usage share data from both StatCounter and Net Applications. There remain some really strange internal inconsistencies with very serious and unexplainable spikes and dips for some of the browsers they're monitoring and I'm discouraged by that.
But until we find some better sources of data, I think it might be useful to try to figure out what we can learn from these sources, if anything. My first pass at this task was just to do some rough comparisons between the two and what I found was both surprising and I think positive.
Here's a chart comparing the last year of data for Internet Explorer and Firefox.
The first thing of note is that the two sources come up with radically different shares for Firefox and IE. The difference between the two is nearly as large as the sum of all the other browsers they measure. I have no idea which of the two sources is closer to "the truth" and I don't think that just averaging them gives us any better picture of "the truth" so I don't think that's a productive avenue but maybe some statistician can show me otherwise.
The second issue worth remarking on is that there's some consistent seasonal changes. Firefox has considerably stronger growth in the winter than it does in the summer and that shows up in both data sources.
The third thing of note is the surprising and more positive bit. Over the course of a year, the two sources are in reasonably close agreement on the trends. Net Applications reports that for this time period, Firefox gained ~4.6 points of usage share and StatCounter reports a gain of ~5.4%. Looking at the IE losses during the period, Net Applications sees an 8.7% loss and StatCounter sees a 9.9% loss. That's really not too wide a gap in the trend, even if the month to month deltas are a little wackier and even if the two pretty firmly disagree on the total share for each browser.
So, my first conclusion, probably an obvious one, is that it's probably not a good idea to fret over the month to month variations but that the longer term changes are probably worth paying some attention to.
This doesn't address any of the geographic disparities, but I think that's a problem we're basically stuck with until we get more representative sources. Given the general agreement between these two sources on at least one front, are the longer term trends worth giving credence to? What do you all think?
There are a number of articles popping up in the last few days that are making a big deal about the recent uninstall survey results showing that a decent number of Firefox 2 users who refuse to upgrade to Firefox 3 or 3.5 are concerned about the Awesomebar revealing some of their "private" bookmarks to anyone looking over their shoulder or using their computer.
Most of this coverage is overblown. Articles and blog posts that contain both "firefox" and "porn" probably get a lot eyeballs and I think that's what's going on here.
Why do I say it's overblown?
As of this week, 94% of Firefox active daily users are on Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5.
(I don't have absolute user numbers for other browsers, but usage is a reasonable proxy here and if you look at Safari, they still have about 16% of their usage coming from two versions or more behind the current release. If you look at the other browser with a significant number of users, IE, a whopping 37% of that share is two versions or more behind.)
If you didn't have any numbers, reading most of the coverage around this would probably lead you to believe that a large percentage of Firefox users were still using Firefox 2. Compared to the other two mainstream browsers, Firefox users are actually very current.
Then there's the actual survey data. If the survey is representative of all of the people still on Firefox 2, then what we're actually talking about is ~1.5% of Firefox users citing the Awesomebar as holding them back.
So Firefox has more users on the current versions than the other browsers and about 1.5% of Firefox users don't like a new Firefox feature. Is that really worthy of all this coverage?
As of August 23, at 7:16 p.m. the Lockheed Fire is 100% contained.
Unburned islands of vegetation continue to burn inside the perimeter of the fire. Fire crews have contained the remaining open fire line in the southern region Threat levels remain low in the Bonny Doon and Swanton areas however, residents should remain alert to possible fire activity occurring in and around the fire area. If anyone who witnesses a large amount of smoke production in the burn area should call the Lockheed Fire Information Line at 831- 335-0378.
Major problems and concerns continue to be the, steep terrain and limited access. Lingering smoke will be present as fire crews continue to fully control the incident. We would like residents driving in the communities affected by the fire to remain cautious of the fire personnel and equipment working to extinguish the fire. Additionally, residents need to be cautious when walking in or near the burned area. Smoldering brush and stumps may be found and are still dangerous.
On behalf of the CAL FIRE Incident Command Team 9, we would like to thank the residents of Bonny Doon, Davenport and the Swanton and Last Chance areas. Your patience and understanding during the evacuation assisted the firefighters in extinguishing the wildfire that threatened the area. To date there have been no lives lost and all homes were saved. We encourage all residents to comply with the 100 foot clearances around all structures. Those interested in learning more information on brush clearance should visit the following website. http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/communications_firesafety_100feet.php
Residents who need more information can contact the Lockheed Fire Information L0378, or go to www.fire.ca.gov.
For the last week or so I've been maintaining a Google Map of the Lockheed Fire perimeter for the good folks at the Santa Cruz Sentinal. SCS has been an amazing online resource for locals trying to get up to the minute information on the fire, thanks to the long hours of the staff and the many residents that have been checking in there with regular updates on the fire.
As you can see from the map, this was a pretty good sized fire not at all far from thousands of homes. That not a single home was lost is a testament to the 2000+ fire personnel that put their lives on hold and on the line to contain this fire. A huge thank you to everyone that played a role bringing this thing under control.
(And three cheers for a single payer government program that saves thousands of lives and untold billions in property every year.)
In case any of you were wondering, this is my 3,936th post at this blog. I've written about 450,000 words here over the course of 88 months.
Recently, Net Applications updated their methodology to weight their browser share by the Internet population of the countries they monitor. This had the effect of knocking Apple's Safari down quite a bit, presumably due to Apple's weak numbers outside of the U.S. and of lifting Opera up some, presumably due to Opera's stronger showing in Europe an Asia.
As of August 1st, we have implemented retroactive country-level weighting in our reports. This means that we adjust our reports proportionally based on how much traffic we record from a country vs. how many internet users that country has. For example, although we have significant data from China, it is relatively small compared to the number of internet users in China. Therefore, we now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports. This change produces a much more accurate view of worldwide usage share statistics.
That sounds like a change for the better, but it also seems to have had some unfortunate side effects. Net Applications obviously does not have equally good sampling in all of the countries it monitors. Where that sample is weak and likely to produce unrepresentative results, the effect can be either magnified or diminished depending on the Internet population of that country or region.
Before the new methodology, presumably, they just reported raw data -- their weighting was tied directly to the strength (size) of their sample. So if they had a relatively small (not likely to be very representative) sample in a particular country, that less good sample had less of an impact on their overall numbers.
Now, though, crazier and unrepresentative numbers in large Internet population countries have a quite dramatic effect on the overall global share reported by Net Applications.
Here's a good example:
Several weeks ago, I saw an odd spike in the Netscape usage share. Netscape hasn't shipped a new browser in ages and their global share has been pretty steady at around half a percentage point for as long as I can remember. Then, for the week of 07/19, their share shot up to over 1%. A doubling of share seemed a bit odd for a browser that's been out of circulation as long as Netscape but when you're dealing with half a percent or less, it's not unreasonable to imagine that it wasn't growth of Netscape so much as a slow week of usage for all the other browsers. I could sort of picture a situation where modern browser users as a cohort all did a bit less browsing for a few days while ancient browser users were unaffected. I didn't think too much about it but it did catch my attention.
Well, this week's numbers just came out and Netscape is showing a global share of almost 4% !!!
Here's what the trends look like for the last couple of months of global share.
My first thought was "this can't be right" so I looked at the U.S. share (subscribers only) and it looked stable and steady with Netscape well under 0.05% for years. So I turned next to share by continent where Asia showed a big Netscape spike. I drilled down a bit further and looked at just China browser share.
Here's what the trends look like for the last couple of months of China share.
So what's going on here? Well, it could be one of a couple of things. First, it could be some kind of spider that identifies itself as "Netscape 6.0" that's crawling the Chinese Web for search engine indexing or something like that. That's something Net Applications could dig into and if it is a spider, just add it to their list of not-counted hits. All competent stats packages can exclude that kind of traffic from their metrics.
Second, and potentially more problematic, Net Applications' sample in China, those Websites that have deployed the Net Applications site analytics package, could be just so few that it only takes a trivial number of site visitors switching browsers to have a very large impact on their measurements.
Either way, this kind of error now has a much larger impact when it happens in a country like China which happens to have the largest Internet using population of any country in the world.
I don't think there's really any good solution to dealing with small sample sizes and any commercial analytics package is going to suffer from that problem. Perhaps a second weighting based on sample size would help in reflecting more accurately the actual data, but that doesn't help us understand Internet populations any better.
I blogged a few months ago about similarly disturbing spikes in IE 6 usage in the metrics reported by StatCounter. I can only conclude that these providers simply don't have a good enough sample to describe global internet populations.
What we really need is measurements from organizations that have much more representative usage and there are only a few that I can think of. That cold come in three forms, as I see it. One, we could find the top measures for every locale and build ourselves a global picture from the bottom up. Two, we could look to a few heavy-weights for large regions (Google would obviously be really good for much of the planet, and combined with local powerhouses like Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, we could probably get a pretty good global measure.) Or three, we could find one source that had solid global representation.
Ben Chuang, in my previous post on this topic had this to say:
I would also suggest that we don't need data from the absolute largest site in the universe, we just need data from a very-large-site-that-is-very representative. What about a more "open" site, like Wikipedia?
I think that's actually a really good suggestion. Wikipedia has articles in more than 250 languages and is regarded as the online encyclopedic authority by most nationalities. Wikipedia also has a huge amount of traffic, billions of visits every month, so it's not as likely to be swayed by the occasional odd visitor patterns.
So what do you all think? Would Wikipedia's browser breakdown be a better measure than the various analytics providers that we've all been using for the last five or six years?
There was a time, several years ago, when Google included browser usage stats in its Zeitgeist reports. Probably some time before the Chrome project started, Google stopped including the browser breakdown in those regular reports.
Google is in a pretty special position with the breadth of their usage so their browser breakdown could give the entire industry a much better picture of the Web than what we currently get from analytics firms like Net Applications and StatCounter.
Google search is available in more than 125 languages, is in widespread use in almost every geography on the planet, and Google obviously has the resources to produce solid metrics reporting. So, why don't they? What commercial value is there in keeping that close to their chest?
We really do need something more globally representative than what we have. Google could really help out here.
The Lockheed Fire is nearly contained. Cal Fire reports 80% containment, there are no further dangers to structures, and the last of the road closures has been lifted. This has been a phenomenal effort by more than 2,000 fire personnel that really couldn't have turned out any better.
I've been maintaining the SCS fire map for almost a week now and as you can see, things are looking really good. The southern end of the fire is the last bit to come under control and I expect tomorrow's reports to show that line becoming stable.
A huge thank you to everyone who put their lives on hold to tackle this massive wildfire. Your efforts are deeply appreciated. You all deserve so much more support than you get.
The Mozilla community finally has a solid design hub. If you're a designer interested in getting involved with Mozilla, you'll want to check out the Mozilla Creative Collective.
Over at Windows IT Pro, Paul Thurrott is confused about one of the points that Harvey and Mitchell brought up.
Like Baker, [Anderson] raises a somewhat nonsensical issue—that IE will somehow try to become the default browser when a user accesses Windows Update—without acknowledging that Windows Update in Windows Vista and Windows 7 doesn't require IE, and that Microsoft has already committed to changing Windows XP accordingly.
Paul, it's not about Windows update requiring IE. It's about Microsoft using Windows Update to launch a just updated IE which triggers the "Make IE the default" advertisement. That's using Windows Update to attempt to undo the user's default browser choice.
Here's the scenario: A person gets a new machine with Vista on it in the spring of 2008. He decides IE 7 isn't to his liking so he downloads, installs, and makes Firefox his default browser. A year later, Microsoft releases IE 8 which comes to the user via Windows Update. The user believes it's smart to keep all of his software, even software that goes unused, up to date for security reasons so he agrees to update his IE 7 to the new version, IE 8. At this point, Windows Update not only updates IE, but it launches the new version and the new version prompts the user to make IE 8 the user's default browser.
You've got a situation here where a user has opted out of IE, chosen Firefox as his default browser, and is now being prompted by Windows Update to return to IE as his default browser. The user didn't launch IE 8, didn't ask for it to be launched and wasn't considering changing his default browser. Windows Update did all of that.
That's an abuse of Windows Update to trigger a reconsideration of the user's defaults. That's what we're concerned about.
update: The eminently reasonable Ryan Paul also misunderstood Harvey's comment. This is tricky territory and it's easy to jump to conclusions, but I think with careful consideration, both Ryan Paul and Paul Thurrott would agree that Windows Update is a Windows feature and using Windows features to regularly re-advertise IE and pressure Firefox and other browser users to make IE the default is a bad behavior.
Harvey Anderson and Mitchel Baker have both posted some responses to Microsoft's proposed settlement with the European Commission. If you care about the browser landscape, especially if you're in Europe, I highly encourage you to go give these two posts a read and offer constructive feedback.
Harvey Anderson: Thoughts on Microsoft’s Settlement Proposal in the European Commission’s Tying Investigation
Mitchell Baker: Proposed Microsoft – EC Settlement
I'll be sharing my thoughts at those two posts and that's a much better place for you all to share (rather than in comments here) if you've got something to add to the conversation. If you just want to rant or cheer, then feel free to do that here.
A few people have asked and I'm sure a couple others are wondering so I thought I'd blog a quick note to say that our home is probably safe from the Lockheed fire.
The Fire, which now covers about 8 or 9 square miles, started about 8 miles south of us and the winds have pushed it further south.
Bonny Doon, Swanton and Davenport are immediately affected and we're hoping the best for all of the people and animals down there.
update Friday @7PM the latest report from Lockheed Fire Incident Command Center puts the wildfire at more than 5,000 acres. Command Center also notes that there are 1,500 firefighters on the scene.
update Saturday AM the latest report is 6,800 acres with 30% containment. Progress!
update Saturday PM the latest report is 40% containment with 2,165 firefighters on the scene (and 295 engines, 31 bulldozers, 21 water tenders, and 14 helicopters.)
update Sunday AM, 50% containment and some strong optimism that they'll be able to pull off full containment a few days earlier than expected. The perimeter actually contracted some between last night's map and this morning's. Some great progress, thanks to the 2,165 brave personnel on the scene. Our thoughts go out to the four (presumably firefighters) injured and everyone affected down there.
update Sunday PM, at 3PM they lifted the mandatory evacuation for the Bonny Doon area. Residents returning will need IDs. This is definitely another great sign that things are getting under control. Go Cal Fire! (note: this does not include the Swanton Road area, yet.)
update For any locals in need of more specifics about where the fire is burning and where it's contained, this map from the Davenport Fire Station (via local resident JH) shows the dozer lines and the uncontrolled fire lines. Map legend here.
update Sunday 6PM update from Cal Fire confirms 65% containment. Mandatory evacuation lifted though only residents can return and must present ID. Swanton Road and Last Chance Road still closed.
update Monday PM update from Cal Fire says 80% containment and mandatory evacuations were lifted in the Upper and Lower Swanton areas, including the community of Last Chance. Awesome!!! Sounds like Warnella and Blodgett are still blocked off but great progress.
This is just hilarious. ... and kind of sad.
With faster start up and improved responsiveness, Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 is ready for testing.
As is obvious from my grand total of three posts to twitter, I'm not huge into the microblogging scene. But, for those of you who are, you should definitely check out mozillaca.com where you can find out about cool stuff like the new code coverage project logo just whipped up by long-time Mozilla contributor (and mozillaca founder) Jame Boje.
This could be interesting. Google buys On2
Looking to customize your browser appearance? Well, if you're a Chrome users, and you're willing to jump through some hoops, there are 29 themes available at the Google Chrome Themes gallery. If, on the other hand, you're a Firefox user, there are about 20,000 themes available via the Personas Gallery.
Net Applications has just released their usage share report for July and with this release they've introduced a new methodology. They're now weighting their browser share by the size of the internet population in the top countries they measure. You can read more about it here.
In the new calculating, Internet Explorer gains a couple of points in share over the old methodology (and a huge change within IE versions -- IE 6 is showing a 10 point gain, for example). Opera also picks up pretty significantly, going from just under 1% share to just over 2% share. Chrome does about half a point better with the new measure, and Firefox gains about a third of a point over the old measure. The big loser is Safari, which saw its share drop from almost nine percent down to just over four percent.
This also has the effect of bringing the Net Applications numbers a bit closer to the StatCounter numbers for the non-mainstream browsers. There's still a pretty big disparity between the Firefox and IE numbers at Net Applications and StatCounter, though.
I'll have more in a follow-up post.
