> These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?
It is hard to get a random sample of internet usage. There is just no easy way - how do you do it?
In theory you would pick a random router around the world, and pick a packet going through it, and if it comes from a web browser, count that. Then normalize by traffic amount in that router. That would, in theory, give the right result with a large enough sample size. But no one (except perhaps the NSA) can do it.
On the other hand, there are at least two companies that pretty much know the truth - Google and Facebook. A huge percent of people visit those sites daily, so much that they don't need to randomly sample, worry about bias factors, etc. - they can just look at the data they have. So internally, they have the numbers. But apparently they consider that information valuable, and do not share it.
Google is much better positioned than Facebook for one reason: Google Analytics. Many sites, even those which aren't otherwise using Google services, embed it and there's really nothing like its reach because all of the competing services cost money.
Google and Facebook only have good data for the countries in which they have significant marketshare (think Russia, China… neither of which are small countries). I'll also posit that Facebook is significantly bias towards younger users.
It is hard to get a random sample of internet usage. There is just no easy way - how do you do it?
In theory you would pick a random router around the world, and pick a packet going through it, and if it comes from a web browser, count that. Then normalize by traffic amount in that router. That would, in theory, give the right result with a large enough sample size. But no one (except perhaps the NSA) can do it.
On the other hand, there are at least two companies that pretty much know the truth - Google and Facebook. A huge percent of people visit those sites daily, so much that they don't need to randomly sample, worry about bias factors, etc. - they can just look at the data they have. So internally, they have the numbers. But apparently they consider that information valuable, and do not share it.