Talk:Usage share of web browsers

What's the bias of this page?

It looks like the underlining issue with the discussion above (Remove Statowl from summary) is that the purpose for the page is ambiguous and/or not agreed upon. The current wording of the page doesn't clearly state what bias is to be mandated for the page. It looks like there are two main camps. Please state what type of bias you want the page to have. (I've exaggerated the summaries to get the points across)

(1) The page is a source of world usage only, so any non-world biased source would taint the accuracy of the mean/medians of the summary table, and should henceforth be removed. The accuracy of the mean/median is valued higher than giving the reader more information and letting them decide what to do with the information. Any user that's looking for regional information that could be provided should just google for it. The key objective is to remove sources until the mean/medians are accurate. The mean is greatly effected by outliers and that is why only sources with small biases should be included.

(2) The page is a summary of usage share information from the sources (companies/sites) that gather the information. Any source can be included as long as it follows a few guidelines*. Providing the reader with information is valued higher than being overly strict and sensitive about what sources are added and how they effect the mean/median. The key objective is to provide the user with the information that's out there and summarise it in a clear and concise way. Every source has a bias, but as long as the bias is understood/stated and/or is within the guidelines* the source should be included. Because of this, the median is more useful because it's less effected by outliers.

Votes:

(2) Jdm64 (talk) 03:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Per wikipedia wp:npov we must present a non biased view. The summary should contain a world view and be removed of any obvious bias. The page is not a source of world usage only. Country biased stats can be presented but should not be mixed with summary world view information. NPOV is one of wikipedia's core principles and is non-negotiable, per policy. The reader should be given plenty of info in a non biased way. Any reader looking for regional information can look in the appropriate section for it, if it exists. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 03:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you're using NPOV correctly in this case. NPOV is for things that have a View Point (for/against); statistics don't have a viewpoint. Statistics is sampling of reality; it's only the interpretation or application that might have a view point. Actually, by not including a reliable source that is trying to be added/maintained, you are actually introducing a bias and being non-neutral. It looks like we're both accusing each other of failing to uphold NPOV. Furthermore, nowhere in "Summary table" is there any mention of the fact that only world biased sources can be included. You are actually imposing a bias into the table; I'm trying to remove that bias. Jdm64 (talk) 05:59, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Can you summarize which bias your concerned about. Want to summarize the arguments and re-vote and or request outside opinion. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 07:00, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, here's my main arguments.

1. I view the page (including summary table) as an unbiased conglomeration of current usage share statistics from sources. While you view the page as a global only summary, as a way to create original research through the use of the summary table, especially the median/mean. (see below for why)
2. Nowhere in the page does it state that global must be upheld and that regional can not be included in the summary table. It's an point of view to think that the summary should only include global sources. Likewise, I admit that including non-global is also a point of view. But we need to decide what way we want it.
3. StatOwl is not a "hard" regional source. Their website states, "92% of web sites serve a predominantly United States market (this is an area we would looking to add more diversity in the upcoming months)". They are looking into the issue and it's not like they're excluding page hits from outside the US, but that the selection of web sites they've picked have for whatever reason been predominately accessed by US visitors.
4. All sources are biased -- it's statistics. If there was no bias then all the sources would be very close to the average. Henceforth, I feel that you're singling out one source for having a bias even-though they've done their statistical due diligent.
5. NPOV is for pages that cover non-data topics where one can form an opinion. If I say that there's X million Firefox users and Y million Chrome users, that's either true or false. But if I say that Firefox is better because it has more users than Chrome, then that's an opinion and would not be NPOV. The point being that including a, what you call, regional source can not be classified as being non-neutral because it's only a report of what a source said, not our own opinion.
6. The NPOV page states "Indicate accurately the relative prominence of opposing views", and a regional source would be an opposing view. So by not including it you violate NPOV because of the relative prominence of web sites and users from the US.
7. Our inclusion of the mean/median is in-fact original research. We don't have the authority to do statistical analysis on the sources because the data that we receive has already been "processed". Any number that we summarise with will always be an opinion. So your worry over the averages being biased (with statowl) is pointless because we're really not suppose to do it in the first place. Taking the average of an average only tells you the average of the average not a more accurate view of the real values because we can't garentee that the sampling methods used by the sources can be trivially combined.
8. Basically by including the average of only global sources we're stating that Wikipedia asserts that the current world usage share is X%. But if we look at it as we have Y number of reliable sources and this is the average then there's no assertion made by Wikipedia. The key difference is the purpose for summary. In the first case, we're summarising to conclude something new, because we feel that averaging the global sources will allow us to be more accurate. In the second case we're summarising to show the distinction among the sources (mainly the difference each source is from each other). Jdm64 (talk) 09:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Ealier I felt that Statowl should have been removed because it distored the results of the mean and median. But now I feel that the inclusion of a mean/median in this article is not just original research, it's a violation of WP:SYNTHESIS, for the reasons Jdm64 mentioned.
--Gyrobo (talk) 15:16, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

(2) mabdul 16:40, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

(1) Sandro kensan (talk) 18:01, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

These votes are meaningless because the options (1) and (2) are not the two options. No one is proposing that all US data be expunged from the page, so that people looking for it "should just google for it". The question is whether to include one predominantly US dataset in the calculation of the mean and median. See Straw man. --Nigelj (talk) 20:24, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

A non-biased page would not present a graph titled "Alternate Browsers" that ignores one browser completely. Either show all or show none. What makes those "Alternate" if you treat all browser equally? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.238.43.12 (talk) 14:30, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

About NetApplications

NetApp measures browser usage different than the other sites. It gives greater weight to a user and less weight to a page load. I can explain further if you'd like. Because of this I suggest it be put in a separate table. One table is based on raw page loads/hits, and other is for usage share based on number of users. The advantage of this is that we aren't trying to mix apples and oranges with the statistics. What do you think?   Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 05:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

do you have references for that? Does this really change anything the market share? mabdul 06:35, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

What specifically do you want a reference for? There is info on each of the web usage reporting sites. Here a link to more of an overview: http://news.softpedia.com/news/IE-vs-Chrome-vs-Firefox-Browser-Market-Share-Insight-159669.shtml   Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 23:16, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Net Applications is measuring world wide usage of web browsers, and as such should be listed in the world-wide table. Each source have different methodologies, and if NetApp's is different enough - we should point reader's attention to it, but not to exclude this source. It is both reliable and verifiable, and also notable (press likes to cite NetApp numbers). Wikiolap (talk) 05:26, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I feel NetApps should be included. It may come up with slightly different numbers, but if it serves the same market as the others, and the methodology is sound, it shouldn't be excluded.
--Gyrobo (talk) 03:16, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

One more thing: now that the median value has been added back to the table, shouldn't the graph reflect that value, rather than any one source?
--Gyrobo (talk) 03:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

You can't take a median of percentages!

It's mathematically incoherent to take a median of percentage values, as the chart at the top of the article does (or did -- I just removed that row). There is absolutely no reason that the medians of a set of percentage data would sum to 100%, because unlike the mean, the median does not have the distributive property. Consider:

Data points:

Foo   Bar   Baz | SUM
15%   25%   60% | 100%
40%   10%   50% | 100%
 5%    5%   90% | 100%

Median:

15%   10%   60% | 85%

Oops! We got values that summed up to 85%, that can't be right! So I've removed the median row from the chart at the top. --FOo (talk) 06:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We aren't concerned if they add up to 100%. The numbers to start with don't add up to 100% anyways. Look at the numbers for w3counter for example.   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 06:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the median row in the table is valid. The thing that wouldn't be valid would be to display the median row as a pie chart, as, e.g., 49% could well look like much more (or less than) than half. The way to display the set of medians would be as a bar graph as we did for a while, but we don't do that at the moment anyway. --Nigelj (talk) 09:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't strongly agree with the pie chart but agree anyways. Next month I'll make it a bar, if someone doesn't do it sooner. By the way the current median adds up to 100.6% , so 49% should look like 49%. :)   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 15:30, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Can I add back the original char? And what median do you want it based on? Both tables are within less than 0.36% difference. Jdm64 (talk) 22:03, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Please use the world-wide table. Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 01:06, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes - please bring back the original chart. I beleive using median from summary table is better - please use it. Wikiolap (talk) 02:06, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok, original chart back, using the world-median. But, like I said before the difference between the two tables is less than 0.36%. So, I think that shows that there's really no need for the duplicated world table. Jdm64 (talk) 02:40, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It's still the case that a median of percentages is of extremely limited significance, and is likely to present a distorted view of the data.

The reason the rows do not sum to 100% is that some data have been excluded in this particular summary presentation (namely, the "other" browsers); obviously, the actual percentages across the full set of data would sum to 100%. (If not, they aren't percentages at all.) That's not a distortion of the data; it's just not presenting the least interesting data.

However, taking the median of percentages from different surveys does distort the data, as in the example I gave above. There is no reason to expect it not to do so. A median is typically used to express the central value of a statistical population (e.g. median age; median income), not to summarize across multiple summary values.

I'll go and seek additional mathematical advice on this subject; watch this space. :) --FOo (talk) 14:58, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Pie Chart vs Bar

Do you guys like the bar chart because of the 100% issue, and or other reasons? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Pie charts in general are problematic. Here are couple of links to talk about it:

• http://blogs.oracle.com/experience/2010/03/countdown_of_top_10_reasons_to_never_ever_use_a_pie_chart.html
• http://www.gilliganondata.com/index.php/2009/12/02/how-succinctly-can-i-explain-why-pie-charts-are-evil/

Wikiolap (talk) 21:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree they are problematic, but I don't agree the bar chart is necessarily better. The thing that a pie chart conveys and that a bar chart doesn't, is that all of the browsers are competing for a share of the web usage pie. Thanks for the links. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The thing we would have to show is that the browsers compete for a share of 100% of the pie. Making a collection of medians add up to 100% is not trivial. It is not acceptable for, e.g., a 50% share to occupy other than 180 deg. Tilting the chart in 3D adds further issues as thin slices near 3 and 9 o'clock then look much thinner than the same ones would near 12 or 6; with true 3D perspective, sectors near 6 o'clock can look even bigger still. These problems disappear (i.e. do not need solving) with a simple bar chart. --Nigelj (talk) 13:17, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Currently the means add up to 100.6% so currently it is trivial. Yes there are pie chart issues, but still doesn't resolve the issue that they convey an important message: That all browsers are competing for a share of the pie and each is trying to grab the largest slice. If we took a user survey which they prefer the bar or the pie, which do you think would be preferred? Perhaps we could have both for a while. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:35, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I really find it hard to read and realizing which browser has how much market share in the comparison of other browsers in the pie chard. 3D makes it almost harder. Please: use the bar charts (and make line for at least every 20% market). mabdul 16:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't really understand why a bar chart is used over a pie chart, it seems an illogical way to present the data and a pie chart seems much more approriate. Even if the numbers don't quite add up a proportional factor can be applied to the shares to correct the error. 193.117.31.4 (talk) 16:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Did you read wikiolap's two links above? I made them more obvious. I agree, but given the preference for bar charts perhaps someday we could have both. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

IE bursting out of the graph

Why does the new bar graph axis end short at 40%? I assume it's not the classic marketing tactic of making the IE bar look like it 'bursting out of the graph', rather than showing it to be 'just less than 50%', which is what it is. --Nigelj (talk) 12:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Its a quirk of the default settings of statistical package used: "R". Probably can be fixed nowing the correct parameter to change. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:06, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

statcounter mobile numbers suspect

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#StatCounter_Mobile

Why does RIM start so low and now overtaking iPhone? iPhone dropping in marketshare? This seems to be contrary to what everyone else is publishing. Seems like those two columns should be reversed. Wondering if statCounter has got something messed up. Any thoughts? Thx, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 06:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I sent statCounter an email. Lets see if they respond. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 13:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 10:21 AM, StatCounter Global Stats <globalstats@statcounter> wrote:
Hi Daniel,

Unfortunately, we would not be in a position to provide explanations for all the trends we see on StatCounter Global Stats - generally, we report the trends and leave the commentary and speculation to journalists, bloggers and other interested parties who make use of our stats.

In this case some other possible points that may be of interest to you include:

• Users may be moving towards using apps on the iPhone rather than the web browsing functionality
• BB appear to be improving their handsets per the latest handset reviews - making them more user-friendly for web browsing etc e.g. Blackberry Torch - "with the BlackBerry Storm touch/click screen, this touch screen is simply light years ahead and also with greatly improved web browsing functionality" (source:http://www.blackberry-phone.co.uk/)

In my own personal experience, Blackberries have been used mainly in the past for the purposes of email and not for web browsing due to the limitations of the browsing functionality. If this is changing, it would explain the stats we are seeing as you suggest.

You should also note that it's possible to use OTHER browsers on the iPhone e.g. Opera (http://gigaom.com/2010/05/28/opera-says-2-6m-iphones-owners-use-opera-mini-do-you/) so it's not necessarily the case that usage of the iPhone is dropping although usage of the iPhone browser has been falling.

Jenni

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:54 AM, Daniel Cardenas <daniel@> wrote:
Hi Jenni,

Thanks for the reply. Here is an example of where your numbers don't make sense. In 2008 you report that iPhone had 22% browsing market share and RIM had 4.7% share. iPhone was relatively new at that time and RIM was established at that time. It makes sense that RIM would have 22% share and iPhone 4.7%. Here is a sales history of iPhone which should ruffly correlate to browser share. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/IPhone_sales_per_quarter_simple.svg
Here is one that includes blackberry sales:
http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=445&mid=5083828&pt=msg

The numbers that statCounter publish can only make sense if one assumes that blackberry's have not been used much to browse the web and now they are starting to be used to browse the web. I'll assume that is the case because that is what your numbers are telling me.

Thanks, Daniel

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 5:39 AM, StatCounter Global Stats <globalstats@statcounter> wrote:
Hi Daniel,

I'm not sure what source you are using for comparison purposes with our figures but we are confident in our stats - there is no error. It's important to ensure that you are comparing like-with-like - we report on mobile internet usage for example, not on sales of handsets.

This recent press release may be of interest to you: http://gs.statcounter.com/press/blackberry-overtakes-apple-in-mobile-wars

Thanks for your feedback.

Jenni
StatCounter Global Stats
Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

---

and that means (for us)? what are the reasons? mabdul 20:51, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

They are standing by their data and give good reasons for it, even though the numbers may seem very odd. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 01:23, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I've reviewed some other websites data and it doesn't come close to what statCounter says. (No I can not supply references.) Matches closer to what wikimedia says, so I'm confident statcounter is doing something unexpected with the logs. Not much we can do about it. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 05:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

In my view, this is not at all unexpected. BlackBerry always had a huge installed base of handhelds. However, they were mostly used for corporate e-mail. From my personal experience, it was next to impossible to browse the normal web with the BlackBerry handhelds; the browser was very slow (partly caused by the handheld not offering WiFi, partly because of the slowness of the processor). Only starting in the end of 2008, when the BlackBerry 8900 and 9000 were released, was the browsing experience acceptable. It only got good once BlackBerry OS 5.0 was released in autumn 2009. Given that corporation typically replace handhelds after around 2 years, this would be entirely consistent with the market shares observed. --SmilingBoy (talk) 09:59, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a suggestion why a large family of websites such as wikimedia has mobile safari 5 times larger than blackberry, while statcounter says blackberry is higher? Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 13:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Getclicky.com also says that mobile safari is 5x blackberry. http://www.getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/#/marketshare/global/web-browsers/mobile/   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 01:33, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Is in this table Opera Browser Opera Mini and Opera Mobil combined or is it separated? If not separated: why not splitting them up, if separated: why not making another column? mabdul 13:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't know about opera mini. Seems netapp created a column for mini recently. I combined it into one column for the summary table. Don't know if mini is counted in the mobile number, since that is where mini is used, i think. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:18, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I mailed statcounter because of the opera mobile proble. here is the response...

Hi Dennis, 

We include both Mobile and Mini under Opera in our Mobile Browser Stats. 

We also include Opera usage on ANY mobile device as defined here:
http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#mobile-definition

Many thanks for your interest in StatCounter Global Stats. 

StatCounter Global Stats

-----Original Message-----
From: **@**.**
Sent: Friday, 7 January, 2011 02:58
To: globalstats@statcounter.com
Subject: Global Stats Feedback From Dennis Roczek


               Name: Dennis
               Company: n/a
               Email: **@**.**
                       
               Hello,
can you explain me what count as a Opera mobile browser? Does this include Opera
Mobile, Opera Mini and ofter devices as the Wii or the Nitendo DS?
Or is only Opera Mobile counted?

Regards
Dennis

mabdul 22:40, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

35% Opera usage in Ukraine?

I've lived in Ukraine for 5 years and I can only think of one time I have ever seen opera used there. This made me a little suspicious of the supposed 35% usage there, so I checked the reference number and all that is referenced is "Top 5 browsers in Ukraine". It is not click-able, unlike the "Top 5 browsers in Germany" link above it, and doesn't seem to be linked to anything at all as far as I can tell. Someone needs to check up on this because I really don't think this is correct (my personal experience could certainly be wrong, but no link?). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.169.150.165 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yep, there is something wrong with that referenced. If you look at the source you can see better what it is suppose to point at. I hacked it it is really obvious now. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-UA-monthly-200910-201010-bar . Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The wrong table is repeated at the head of the article

Now that we have three summary tables in this article, I believe that the wrong one currently has prominence at the top of the page. With only two lines of data in it, the November table is currently inaccurate and highly misleading. The October table has eight lines of data (even though one of them is still regional) and so is much more suitable for prominence and graphing. Promoting the new month's data long before it is complete is not the best way to use the current layout IMHO. --Nigelj (talk) 22:45, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Over and Under estimation

This section has unencyclopedic content. I'm planning on deleting most of the text that doesn't have a reference. Feel free to add it back in if you have a reference. Some of the text is just wrong. For example the comparison of text versus graphical browsers. The web hit counting software that I've seen counts page views and not image views. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I support to keep only these bullet points in this section which have references. I also want to point out, that it is not our role to decide what is "wrong" and what is "right", but only what has verifiable and reliable references. Wikiolap (talk) 19:53, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Change date format from January 2010 to 2010-01 ?

What do you think about changing the date format from something like January 2010 to 2010-01? The advantages are:

1. Sortable
2. More compact
3. Perhaps easier to read for non native english reader.

Disadvantages are:

1. Not the typical way we write dates.

Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:19, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I prefer to keep the month names - they are more readable than numbers. And for non native English readers (I am, BTW, is non native English reader too), if they don't know month names - they probably won't know most of other words. Wikiolap (talk) 19:56, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wrong stats used!!

Check out the stats on

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

They are not the same as in this article from November 2010!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.59.94.16 (talk) 09:46, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

W3Counter or w3Schools?--Sandro kensan (talk) 20:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

indeed, I also totally agree that the statistics used in this article currently is totally inapropriate! Searching today for this kind of information (from studying purpose) I could agree only to the information provided on w3schools web page... I hope it'll be changed in this article soon! Or at least that source with it's data gonna be provided... otherwise it gonna look like browser lobbies reached even wikipedia :/ 78.104.123.6 (talk) 20:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Can you expand on your opinion? Why only w3schools web page? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Europe FF overtaking IE in lead section pool

Does the mention of FF overtaking IE in Europe in December 2010 deserves to be in article lead section.

• Oppose - it is newsworthy right now, but there are many dynamics in browser wars at different times in different places - it doesn't fit into lead, but rather to Browser Wars article. Wikiolap (talk) 18:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support - IE has been the worldwide dominant browser since about 1999. It's usage share graph has been on a downward trend for some time, but this is the first time it has lost its leading position since then (11 - 12 years is a long time in the history of the WWW). And in Europe too - that's an important world region. Who'd have guessed just a short time ago? This is one of the most notable milestones in web browser history. --Nigelj (talk) 19:51, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support - When it is not newsworthy, it will be replaced with something similar. For example: Firefox is the most popular browser in Europe. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:41, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

For the 1999 info that was reverted from the lead, that could go in a history section. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 00:37, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

This looks like double standard - if FF overtakes IE (if only in Europe), then it is interesting. But if IE overtakes NS - then it is not interesting. I am just trying to keep article balanced and unbiased - either both deserve to be in the lead, or none. Wikiolap (talk) 01:03, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a reason history isn't in the lead in most articles. Its mostly about what is relevant now. thx, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 04:04, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Your opinion is requested on what should or shouldn't be in the lead

wp:lead says that the lead should be a summary of the article, mention the most interesting points and be about 3 paragraphs long. Here are some things that could (doesn't mean should) be in the lead:

1. Fun facts about each browser. What makes the browser interesting in terms of usage share.
2. Regional variations in usage share. Perhaps the same as the above.
3. Latest trends in usage share.
4. History of one or more of the above.

I didn't include in the above items: definition, summary table, and chart. I'm thinking people are good with those. What do you think the lead should look like? My opinion is we should add some text about the x year trend of I.E. dropping in usage share and recent chrome, safari, and mobile gaining usage share. Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I won't add funfacts.

1. in the first summary table I would add the recent changes.
2. I would (somewhere in the page) add a summarized (svg) graph of all browsers. (like adding mosaic for the beginning...)

just my 2 c mabdul 18:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

• I would keep regional variations in the dedicated section. In fact we already have this section :)
• I would not keep info about specific recent changes to browser market share landscape in the lead either - if they are worthy mentioning - they can be in their dedicated section. It is OK to have some summary in the lead, like saying that IE used to be a king, but not anymore, rise of mobile browsing.

Wikiolap (talk) 19:29, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Commentary about the mobile column

Wikimedia lists mobile for december at 6.4 percent.[1] 3.4% of this is safari. No doubt much of this is due to the ipad and itouch. I wouldn't call an ipad with wi-fi access mobile, but I believe wikimedia does. Notebooks are starting to come with 4g access, they seem very mobile, but we don't include them in the mobile column. For some mobile means using a limited browser, but even cell phone handset browsers seem full featured with flash. The category seems murky and no doubt a better way to categorize will present itself as mobile continues to grow.[2] Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

template

Why is the web browsers template removed? It is really a part of the article...mabdul 22:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The article is about usage share of browsers, not browsers. If you think it belongs here that add it back in. Perhaps it can be minimized by default.   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

This template includes many browser (not all which have an article). But there are also related articles in. and this contains the usage share of web browsers. (already linked in) mabdul 23:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

There are some problems about the percent in the tables

For example, Stat Counter: 46.94% + 30.76% + 14.85% + 4.79% + 2.07% = 99.41% (0.59% is other), but the mobile browsers are 4.10%.

This meant that these data (100%) are refer to desktop browsers only, are NOT contained the mobile browsers. So, these tables should add the NOTES. - 111.251.195.122 (talk) 01:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I think others prefer to adjust the percentages, I was a bit reluctant to do that because for the world wide summary table it cancels out low numbers their. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 04:26, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Add w3schools

I was thinking of adding w3schools with disclaimers. Yes, it is not representative of global usage share but neither is statowl and is a popular site in general and for browser stats.   http://w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp   What do you think?   Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:06, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I think we've had this discussion before (check the archives). The reason for not adding w3schools boils down to: The stats are only for their site, unlike the other sources which use many diverse sites. This is further compounded by the specific nature of the site (web development) which is a very niche market. Now, if the other editors agree to adding w3schools, I might be willing to bend, but the stats really are an order of magnitude divergent from the median. Jdm64 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC).

For the reasons Jdm64 listed above, and per previous discussions - I am against adding w3schools to this article. Wikiolap (talk) 03:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The stats do not indicate an order of magnitude different. So you feel a little bit whacked like statowl is o.k. but more whacked is bad? Kind of playing favorites don't you think? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 05:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, what would be your definition of order of magnitude different? Because I'd say that the inverted stats between I.E. and Firefox is abnormally different, especially since the median difference between the two is about 15%. But if you don't like that reason, look at it given the fact that all the other sources gather data from multiple domains, except w3schools. Jdm64 (talk) 09:43, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

and except wikimedia. But I have to say that I'm also against adding it. The discussion was quite clear: web developers/technic-affines are choosing software that their needs serve; others often don't know that they have a choice. For that reason the EU created browserchoice.eu! mabdul 10:23, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

To answer Daniel.Cardenas question about playing favorites - the criteria I try to judge this is outlined above - if source aggregates wide range of sites - it is OK, if it reports only for its own site - then it is not OK. This seem like a clear and reasonable criteria, and it is accepted by most of the editors here. "degree of whackiness", on the other hand, is very subjective criteria :) Wikiolap (talk) 17:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Google is a single site, Wikipedia is a single site and they are not an aggregate of wide range of site. --Sandro kensan (talk) 20:32, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Wide is a subjective term. Is browser statistics based on 92% of one country wide?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude - "In its most common usage, the amount being scaled is 10 and the scale is the (base 10) exponent being applied to this amount ..."

15% ? You should remove statowl also then.

Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:02, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

A few points. (a) We have Wikimedia, not Wikipedia stats here. (b) It's not about how many sites, it's about how representative a sample the figures are of all actual web users. (c) Figures from one site that serves mainly people who want to learn to build websites, or from several sites that all serve mainly US American users, are not representative figures of the World Wide Web (d) Even if we did use just Wikipedia figures from every language (which we don't, see (a)), that would still be a very representative sample of worldwide usage. As we include all the other Wikimedia projects worldwide too, it's even bigger and better. I am against using small, narrow and non-representative samples (especially ones that provide mostly outliers in each stat, or other anomalous results), but I don't see Wikimedia's figures in that category at all. --Nigelj (talk) 21:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

NetApplication unique visitors

«Netapplications bases its usage share mainly on the usage statistics of 40,000 websites having around 160 million unique visitors.» I ask: "160 million unique visitors" is it a correct sentence?

The official netapplication site writes: «We ‘count’ unique visitors to our network sites, and only count one unique visit to each network site per day.» [3] I suppose unique visit to each network site is different from unique visit to all network sites. Or "each and "all" is the same?

So if each single site has unique visitors that is summed with other unique visitors to other network site then 160 million divided 40,000 website is the average unique visitors from one site that Netapplication monitored. 4000 is the one site average unique visitors: not much.

The 40,000 website's unique visitors is less, much less of 160 million. 160 million is a sum of unique visitors but 160 million are not unique visitors. Do you agree?--Sandro kensan (talk) 17:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

World Map of Most Popular Browsers by Country

The world map of most popular browsers by country is available at http://www.browserrank.com. It is updated regularly (weekly) and it is based on statcounter.com data. It also shows usage share of Internet Explorer and Chrome on country level too. It should be included as a visualization of worldwide distribution of popular browsers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.65.80.66 (talk) 16:37, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Additional stats

Should there be articles for additional browser statistics such as:

• Usage share of operating systems of web browsers
• Usage share of display resolution of web browsers
• Usage share of display resolution of web browsers
• Usage share of color depth of web browsers (Though virtually all are now 32bit)

Smallman12q (talk) 18:47, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

January wikimedia update

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Erik Zachte <ezachte@....org> wrote:

On 2/6/2011 1:34 AM, Daniel Cardenas wrote:

Hi Eric,

Do you know if there are instructions somewhere, on how to create the

traffic analysis report? I'm interested in seeing the data for January.

http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2010-12/SquidReportClients.htm

Thanks,

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

I will update the report in coming week when I get home from US conference. Complete automation of the reports is on the to do list, but that may take a while.

Best, Erik
Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

old stat pages

copied from archive 2:

== World Wide Web Survey 1994-1998 ==

How come the other browsers in the GVU WWW user survey (January 1994 to October 1998) aren't listed? There are also other surveys at [4].Smallman12q (talk) 14:02, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I found some more interesting historic links:

• CNN - Behind the numbers: Browser market share
• UIUC stats

mabdul 14:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

to do: expand wikimedia mobile browsers

Mobile Safari at 3.73% + desktop at 5.53% = 9.26%. That's an interesting statistic. :) I was thinking of having sub headings. Safari with 3 subheadings of desktop, mobile, and total. Don't know if we should do something similar for mobile other. Such as subheadings for android, ...
Disappointing that statcounter stats don't come close.   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Usage share data from Wikimedia visitor log analysis report

Period	Internet Explorer	Firefox	Chrome	Safari			Opera	Mobile other
				Desktop	Mobile	Total
January 2011	41.56%	28.71%	11.75%	5.53%	3.73%	9.26 %	3.55%	3.17%

Probably need to have total mobile and non safari mobile. Kind of messy.  :(   I think I'm not going to bother with the whole thing, unless someone has a better idea.  :)   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 06:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

what about opera and opera mobile, opera mini, opera wii and opera ds? mabdul 10:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Usage share data from Wikimedia visitor log analysis report

Period	Internet Explorer	Firefox	Chrome	Safari			Opera			Android	Mobile
				Desktop	Mobile	Total	Desktop	Mobile	Total		Other	Total
January 2011	41.56%	28.71%	11.75%	5.53%	3.73%	9.26 %	3.55%	0.70%	4.25%	0.90%	1.57%	6.90%

Getting unwieldy don't you think? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 17:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I have a widescreen monitor... For me it doesn't matter... The question is should we open the box of Pandora? (what about mobile ie, chrome will also go mobile. FF is already mobile) mabdul 18:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Another suggestion is to have two tables - for desktop browsers and for mobile browsers. It probably will make difference more visible, because market shares in mobile are very different from desktop...Wikiolap (talk) 05:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)