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This whole article is predicated on the wrong measurement. When you search Google Trends for Open Source Software as a type of Software Industry [1], you get a

• rubiquity 11y ago
  At this point in the game, Googling for Open Source is like talking about oxygen. I don't even think about it. I just breathe.
• andrewstuart2 11y ago
  100% agreed, but for different reasons. I recently realized that I've been mistaking google trends as accurate feedback on the popularity of a subject. It is not. My current thought is that it much better indicates a lack of consensus (or foreknowledge) of the proper source for information about a search term. If, for example, you know that godoc.org is the best place to search for golang libraries, you'd probably just type godoc.org. If not, you'd probably just google "golang rest library" or some such term, adding to the results for golang. Once those sources become well-known and begin being passed around on side-channels (outside the reach of google searches), then google trends is no longer accurate. For any given suject, it's impossible to get a gauge on how much traffic is just going directly to bookmarks or links. Unless you're collecting anonymous usage statistics from a market-leading browser. For example. :-D