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28.3% on IE, 41% on Windows 7. Wow. It's odd, being in the tech bubble, you forget how many people there are that really don't think about their technology (or

28.3% on IE, 41% on Windows 7. Wow. It's odd, being in the tech bubble, you forget how many people there are that really don't think about their technology (or work somewhere for whom the most important things are cost and stability). It would be interesting to take a poll of what people think the numbers would be like before they saw them. I would have guessed a lot more Chrome/FF.

higherpurpose 12y ago
I'm actually surprised at how low the IE number is - for government websites. Obviously you can't compare it to the traffic on HN or Techcrunch, where like 70 percent must be on Chrome and 5 percent on IE, but seeing how some analystics sites still put IE at 50 percent market share, I think that's quite impressive. Or NetApps' market share numbers are crap, and StatCounter's (and others') numbers are a lot closer to reality - which is that Chrome dominates the web browser market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
- Hovertruck 12y ago
  I slapped this together recently using Chartbeat's realtime data (so the sources are major sites – nytimes.com, foxnews.com, espn, etc): http://percentoftheinternet.com http://percentoftheinternet.com http://percentoftheinternet.com/windows http://percentoftheinternet.com/windows http://percentoftheinternet.com/chrome http://percentoftheinternet.com/chrome http://percentoftheinternet.com/ie http://percentoftheinternet.com/ie ...etc... Raw data is here: https://api.chartbeat.com/cbtotal/?v=2 https://api.chartbeat.com/cbtotal/?v=2
- acdha 12y ago
  NetApps numbers appear to be based on a small number of corporate sites, which are skewed towards US media companies. They weight the numbers by the CIA World Factbook data for internet usage in a country but they've never given a reason to believe this approach doesn't exaggerate the distortions present in their sample of data. If you want reliable numbers, nothing beats direct measurement for a comparable site. I've never worked on a site where traffic was anywhere near NetApps’ but I've found Akamai’s numbers to be reasonably close for sites which target a general audience: http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset_v2.html http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset_v2.html
thejosh 12y ago
IE8 is just 3%, great news. On par with what we see. Most people whinge about IE8 support, yet their mobile experience is awful. 25% of these hits are mobile, we see close to 40-50% for us, with much higher for hospitality clients (bars, restaurants), though they usually get <3k sessions a month.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- kevan 12y ago
  Similar IE8 and mobile numbers here. IE8 support used to be a main focus because 3% of a really big number is still a pretty big number. Then we started paying attention to mobile stats and realized how much we were missing in the mobile experience.
JimmyM 12y ago
What would someone who really thought about their technology run? Why would the most important things for an operating system not be cost and stability? e: Realise this comes off as confrontational. Genuine questions!
- vacri 12y ago
  Stability and features tend to fight each other.
driverdan 12y ago
What's wrong with Windows 7? The majority of the world runs Windows and 7 is a fine choice. It's rock solid and there's really no reason to upgrade to 8.
- bduerst 12y ago
  Maybe they're worried that Windows 7 is only 41%? I think W7 is the de facto for businesses now.
- austenallred 12y ago
  Nothing is "wrong" with it, I'm just surrounded by people who obsess about tech all day and go after whatever is newest and shiniest - if you're not running chromium on your 15" retina macbook pro then you're obviously incompetent. Turns out for most people stability and cost are much more important than having something incrementally better. Not passing judgment on one or the other, just thought it an interesting realization. For what it's worth, I run Windows on a virtual machine to do some stuff and I use 7.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I'd love to see the stats for HN for browser use.
    - joedavison 12y ago
      On February 20, I had a story hit the front page of HN on a brand-new blog that didn't receive traffic from anywhere else. Here are some screen shots from my analytics. OS: http://i.imgur.com/oZNOxCK.png http://i.imgur.com/oZNOxCK.png Browser: http://i.imgur.com/84DGWHz.png http://i.imgur.com/84DGWHz.png
      - hackmiester 12y ago
        For the amount of *nix people I see showing out on here, I'm surprised that it's only 10% - although for the Web in general, that's an absurdly high number, still!
Bedon292 12y ago
It is interesting to see the IE numbers, I suspect it is because many government computers do not have other options. When I was in the military it was all we had. CAC cards also only work properly in IE, on government sites at least, so that will likely also skew the numbers. We of course were running extremely outdated versions too, so that may be part of the higher 8/9 numbers then you might expect.
- jsight 12y ago
  As someone that has had a CAC, it does work on non-IE browsers (including on non-Windows OSes) for most government sites.
  - zackify 12y ago
    It does but half the crap they have us use runs on flash and only works in ie8...
jsight 12y ago
I would have guessed much higher for IE (closer to 50%). I'm glad that it is ~30%, as that means we have a relatively competitive market with a diverse array of quality products to choose from (and yes, that includes recent versions of IE).

higherpurpose 12y ago

I'm actually surprised at how low the IE number is - for government websites. Obviously you can't compare it to the traffic on HN or Techcrunch, where like 70 percent must be on Chrome and 5 percent on IE, but seeing how some analystics sites still put IE at 50 percent market share, I think that's quite impressive. Or NetApps' market share numbers are crap, and StatCounter's (and others') numbers are a lot closer to reality - which is that Chrome dominates the web browser market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Hovertruck 12y ago
I slapped this together recently using Chartbeat's realtime data (so the sources are major sites – nytimes.com, foxnews.com, espn, etc): http://percentoftheinternet.com http://percentoftheinternet.com http://percentoftheinternet.com/windows http://percentoftheinternet.com/windows http://percentoftheinternet.com/chrome http://percentoftheinternet.com/chrome http://percentoftheinternet.com/ie http://percentoftheinternet.com/ie ...etc... Raw data is here: https://api.chartbeat.com/cbtotal/?v=2 https://api.chartbeat.com/cbtotal/?v=2
acdha 12y ago
NetApps numbers appear to be based on a small number of corporate sites, which are skewed towards US media companies. They weight the numbers by the CIA World Factbook data for internet usage in a country but they've never given a reason to believe this approach doesn't exaggerate the distortions present in their sample of data. If you want reliable numbers, nothing beats direct measurement for a comparable site. I've never worked on a site where traffic was anywhere near NetApps’ but I've found Akamai’s numbers to be reasonably close for sites which target a general audience: http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset_v2.html http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset_v2.html

thejosh 12y ago

IE8 is just 3%, great news. On par with what we see. Most people whinge about IE8 support, yet their mobile experience is awful. 25% of these hits are mobile, we see close to 40-50% for us, with much higher for hospitality clients (bars, restaurants), though they usually get <3k sessions a month.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
kevan 12y ago
Similar IE8 and mobile numbers here. IE8 support used to be a main focus because 3% of a really big number is still a pretty big number. Then we started paying attention to mobile stats and realized how much we were missing in the mobile experience.

JimmyM 12y ago

What would someone who really thought about their technology run? Why would the most important things for an operating system not be cost and stability? e: Realise this comes off as confrontational. Genuine questions!

vacri 12y ago
Stability and features tend to fight each other.

driverdan 12y ago

What's wrong with Windows 7? The majority of the world runs Windows and 7 is a fine choice. It's rock solid and there's really no reason to upgrade to 8.

bduerst 12y ago
Maybe they're worried that Windows 7 is only 41%? I think W7 is the de facto for businesses now.
austenallred 12y ago
Nothing is "wrong" with it, I'm just surrounded by people who obsess about tech all day and go after whatever is newest and shiniest - if you're not running chromium on your 15" retina macbook pro then you're obviously incompetent. Turns out for most people stability and cost are much more important than having something incrementally better. Not passing judgment on one or the other, just thought it an interesting realization. For what it's worth, I run Windows on a virtual machine to do some stuff and I use 7.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I'd love to see the stats for HN for browser use.
  - joedavison 12y ago
    On February 20, I had a story hit the front page of HN on a brand-new blog that didn't receive traffic from anywhere else. Here are some screen shots from my analytics. OS: http://i.imgur.com/oZNOxCK.png http://i.imgur.com/oZNOxCK.png Browser: http://i.imgur.com/84DGWHz.png http://i.imgur.com/84DGWHz.png
    - hackmiester 12y ago
      For the amount of *nix people I see showing out on here, I'm surprised that it's only 10% - although for the Web in general, that's an absurdly high number, still!

Bedon292 12y ago

It is interesting to see the IE numbers, I suspect it is because many government computers do not have other options. When I was in the military it was all we had. CAC cards also only work properly in IE, on government sites at least, so that will likely also skew the numbers. We of course were running extremely outdated versions too, so that may be part of the higher 8/9 numbers then you might expect.

jsight 12y ago
As someone that has had a CAC, it does work on non-IE browsers (including on non-Windows OSes) for most government sites.
- zackify 12y ago
  It does but half the crap they have us use runs on flash and only works in ie8...

jsight 12y ago

I would have guessed much higher for IE (closer to 50%). I'm glad that it is ~30%, as that means we have a relatively competitive market with a diverse array of quality products to choose from (and yes, that includes recent versions of IE).