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Comment by Toshio | Hacker News Reader

It always leaves me dissatisfied to see the word "popular" in the context of web browsers, when people actually mean to say "ubiquitous".

You know what would be a very interesting statistic?

Take all windows PCs, look at usage of non-IE browsers, then take all Macs, look at usage of non-Safari browsers, then take all Ubuntu PCs, look at usage of non-Firefox browsers. Tally it all up and you'll have a reasonable gauge of popularity, where "popular" is defined as "people actively choosing this browser over the default one".

I strongly suspect Chrome would utterly dominate that statistic.

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> I strongly suspect Chrome would utterly dominate that statistic.

Of course it would, because you would be ignoring a chunk of the other browser's users but counting each and every Chrome user.

Interesting point, but I have to disagree. Notice I have counted windows, Mac OS and Ubuntu but I left out Chromebooks since they are browser-locked. As such there are instances of Chrome I'm excluding.

You're missing the point.

What you're really trying to do is statistically correct for "defaultness"; i.e. remove the users who would actually prefer browser X but use browser Y because it's the default. Your methodology isn't a sound way of doing that, because it also excludes users who use the default browser on their operating system because they prefer it to all others. To be sound, your methodology would need a way to not count the former users while leaving the latter users intact.

I agree with your premise but not with your solution. For exemple, IE would never have any point in your "popular" statistic.

Of course it would in the cases where you run a newer version then the one that shipped originally on your windows install.

Since newer versions are available in windows update it hardly presents a challenge or signals an active choice to update IE any more than trying to keep your system up to date / secure.

Chrome and Firefox would still have about the same numbers, there's not that many Ubuntu PC's out there (Firefox might lose a percent or so).

But then you assume nobody wants to use the default browser... Safari is a super decent browser on the Mac, its multi-touch support is more functional and less fiddly than Chrome's. I actively prefer it. And I make websites for a living.

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