David M Williams
Monday, 01 June 2009 12:05
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
For the same period – April 2009 – the site W3Counter.com reported
a 2.16% Linux market share.
Ok, we’re still talking small numbers here, but just back one page we were excited Linux had reached 1% of desktops. In the amount of time it took you to click forward one page that market share has now doubled.
Don’t stop reading; by the end of this page it'll be 4%!
So, where do W3Counter get their figures from? Every time you have visited a web page that includes a “W3 Counter” icon – which might include a page hit count – that’s data feeding into W3Counter.
Simply put, W3Counter maintains web page counters for web sites around the globe. Their service fits into the category of webmaster tools, providing demographics not just a tally of visitors but also demographics of visitors along with tracking precisely how people have navigated through a web site and how long they remained on each page.
W3Counter doesn’t, as far as I could see, state how many web sites use their service but I’m inclined to think they have a more representative spread of Internet usage because of the simple fact any web site owner can embed W3Counter into their site.
By contrast, Net Applications is less accessible to the layman, and what’s more they flash logos for a raft of corporate media outlets. The branding strongly suggests Net Applications are following web sites that you might expect to be used more often by the type of person locked down to a corporate standard operating environment.
Forget any thought that Linux had reached 1% market share. It's now 2% - but that's not the end of it!
