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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

I find that map breaking down usage by country interesting. It seems almost nobody is using it in India and Australia. Is it performing badly, is it blocked by ISPs, or are those people just overly obsessed with privacy? Even China's usage is higher, surprisingly, even though it wouldn't help at all with bypassing censorship.

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In India, the recent explosion in 4G availability has lead to a dramatic increase in first time internet users. But unlike earlier generation of users, these users have never accessed internet via a desktop - they only use a mobile, usually Android-based - nearly 80% of internet usage is via mobile now. That may account for the low usage as normal users cannot easily change dns settings on Android or iOS for that matter.

Australia is a puzzle though.

> I find that map breaking down usage by country interesting. It seems almost nobody is using it in... Australia. Is it performing badly

No. It works well.

> is it blocked by ISPs

No.

> or are those people just overly obsessed with privacy?

No.

I don't know why it's low in usage, bit I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be low. I don't know anyone who would even think to change their DNS servers.

Sure but I'd have expected similar usage throughout western countries. here in Germany I wouldn't consider the average person any more techy than in Australia or anywhere else. People are pretty conservative and stick to what they know in general. I don't know anyone besides coworkers or friends working in the field who would do that, but then at least half of them are probably too skeptical of google to actually do it.

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