Talk:Usage share of web browsers

"IE8 Usage … Triples?!" – and back too normal next month – do not read too much into short term trends.. [possibly because of botnet, but denied.]

"Despite extensive investigation we have not found any evidence of bot or other invalid activity in the December stats. The spike in IE 8.0 may have been a seasonal issue [..]" (seen by hovering over)[1] Original link I posted - also interesting[2]

[The rise of IE 8 (and corresponding fall of Chrome) is not seen in e.g. Asia or Europe numbers, but is noticeable in Worldwide numbers (it's that big). Even if all non-desktop platforms are included a slight blip in Chrome is seen.]

[Note below are links with "Worldwide Desktop & Tablet Browser Statistics" while StatCounter above shows desktop (and I believe tablets where not affected). While blips like these take from Chrome desktop and not absolute tablet or mobile numbers, they change relative mobile/Android/iOS numbers..]

"We may never discover the real reason behind IE8’s phantom jump. Perhaps it’s just a statistical blip — unless you can concoct a better conspiracy theory?"[3]

Older article from same guy at sitepoint: "Have US web users suddenly turned nostalgic for ancient browsers? One potential explanation could be the high profile corporate hacks and denial of service (DoS) attacks on the Xbox and Sony gaming networks. DoS attacks generally rely on malware distributed to thousands of devices — and Windows XP is an easier target than most. Presuming the malware cloned the default browser’s user agent string, it could look as though traffic originated from IE8.[..]

The blip means it’s difficult to comment on the performance of other browsers — they all dropped. Firefox lost half a point. Interestingly, StatCounter did comment that Yahoo is used three times more often on Firefox in the US now that it’s become the default search engine for version 34."[4]

Chromium

Mention if Chromium is counted along with (as) Google Chrome or "Other". Jidanni (talk) 21:32, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikimedia statistics

Does anybody know what the methodology is for the Wikimedia statistics in the summary table? I was going to try to update them, but I don't know how they should be aggregated or anything like that. HoboMcJoe (talk) 13:55, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Where are Tor and Epic??

OK wow. I had to sign up to Wikipedia as an author UNIQUELY to write about this here.

So, how in the world can this article about browsers not even *mention* Tor and, in a lesser measure, Epic?

Epic is used by over 1 million users, which is absolutely not negigeable, and Tor, well, by a much higher percentage of citizens of Earth trying to protect their privacy online.

So I will add a short section conerning privacy-friendly browsers and please don't remove it unless you can provide factual evidence here that these browsers are not used over the world.

Many thanks.

--Thewhitegrizzli (talk) 01:33, 23 September 2020 (UTC)thewhitegrizzli

The problem with Epic is the server can't actually tell if the client is using the Epic browser. According to this post [5] "We'll continue to use a common user-agent, usually from chrome, to keep everyone anonymous." Wikipedia's counting method depends on examining the user-agent so has no way of distinguishing it from Chrome.

The Tor browser does the same, but this time it cannot be distinguished from Firefox.

So how do we know there are a million people using Epic/Tor? We can't count downloads as many people may download the browser but rarely actually use it. Currently, the statement is uncited and we need a reference for this use count. --Salix alba (talk): 05:05, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Browsers that should be recognised as notably absent

I queried a Toolforge Massviews Analysis on Category:Web browsers. Here are some examples that don't appear in this page:

• Brave (web browser)
• Chromium (web browser)
• Vivaldi (web browser)
• Lynx (web browser)
• Pale Moon (web browser)
• Torch (browser)

Obviously, the last couple of browsers are basically irrelevant. However, Brave and Chromium are pretty high on the list. I'm not sure how to interpret Chromium, because its traffic is probably linked to being a very significant codebase.

Brave, however, should definitely be mentioned. Looking up the sources, none of the statistics seem to register Brave at all (probably because of the privacy shields). But it is the third most viewed web browser on Wikipedia in the last six months, so I think it is basically impossible that it is statistically irrelevant. Andibrema (talk) 12:38, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

• According to Wikipedia, "As of July 2022, Brave has more than 62 million monthly active users, 19.2 million daily active users and a network of more than 1.4 million content creators." That sure looks significant to me, too. 2600:6C67:1C00:5F7E:1D6:790B:86D6:9DBE (talk) 20:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

@Andibrema Am I reading you correctly that we cannot track Brave users? Because it does seem likely that there would be a lot of readers of the page relative to how many people are using it. (For decades the most used browser was IE; what portion of those users do you think looked it up in the encyclopedia?) — HTGS (talk) 22:49, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

References