Google Chrome Displaces Safari As Third In Survey 235
Azureflare writes "According to a Net Applications survey, Google Chrome has replaced Apple's Safari as the number-three browser. This may be partially explained by the release of the Chrome beta on Mac and Linux, but may also be due to users jumping ship from IE. More analysis on this topic can be found at ComputerWorld. As anecdotal evidence of Google Chrome usage gaining steam, Bank of America has apparently recently added Google Chrome to their list of officially supported browsers."
Getting off the train to crazytown (Score:5, Insightful)
The persistence of IE6 is due to organizations standardizing on the MS suite from the server to the browser and building their business intellingence into that web platform. They embraced and were trapped by the consequences of that decision, after which getting themselves out of that trap involved huge expense and much opportunity cost as well as much lost face. Bearing the scars of that experience, its not surprising that they are wary of re-entering the same trap twice. They appear to be deciding that "standards are good". See? Are childrens can has learnings.
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Re:Getting off the train to crazytown (Score:4, Informative)
Since the beginning of December I've seen loads of adverts in London (mostly on trains and in stations) for Google Chrome... have Google been advertising anywhere else?
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you saw it - and remembered it!
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Re:Getting off the train to crazytown (Score:5, Funny)
>The level of advertising on the London Underground is pretty much at saturation level, I'd say.
I refuse to use the London Underground until it gets a decent adblocker.
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here's a decent adblocker, insert each of these into your eyes:
*you found a pair of chopsticks*
Re:Getting off the train to crazytown (Score:4, Funny)
Augmented reality glasses with a built in ad blocker is a thing that could very well happen in a few decades. Ad companies will probably compensate it with hypnotic ads however so those suckers who haven't got the ad blocker installed in their glasses are doomed.
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I've seen lots of them around the South of England, around Manchester and in Cardiff, so I would imagine they are all over the UK.
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getting themselves out of that trap
People are still IN the trap. It's vendor lock-in at its finest. They start with MS from client to server, and everything is dependent on other MS products. Then they seal it when they have to start making MS-based web apps and such. And on top of that, they see no reason to get out. There aren't any 'consequences' for some people. So they just stay in the MS-hole.
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Having been on both sides of that -- at a company ignorantly producing software that required IE, and at companies that had to support systems still running IE because of that precide problem, its not organizations standardizing on the MS suite, the problem stemmed from the shortage of qualified web application developers at the tail end of the dot-com boom. There were vast numbers of "developers" getting into the space that had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and the non-technical companies who we
Re:Getting off the train to crazytown (Score:5, Informative)
My experience has been the opposite. I've worked with some very smart engineers in the financial industry. Any time we tried to diverge from the MS path we were told to stay on it by management. These companies had signed very large contracts with Microsoft (for licenses and support), and so management felt they needed to commit completely to get the full value from their contracts, even when other solutions would save them money in the long term. This was most definitely corporate policy, straight from the CTOs / CIOs.
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Sadly, you can be right and still not win the argument.
This thread is quite remarkable. (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had posted this comment - no matter how deep - on slashdot a year ago, there would be several dissenting replies both from ACs and signed in users of various UID ages (but mostly new ones), and then subcomments supporting the dissenting views. I would have used their ignorance to amplify my message with dozens of applicable links and so in the view of search engines amplify the importance of those links. I would have been motivated to do so by the challenge presented. The idiots would have continued t
Chrome (Score:5, Informative)
Has passed? StatCounter shows [statcounter.com] they already passed in August 2008, far before Chrome beta for Mac or Linux was available. However Internet Explorer still seem to have majority of marketshare with 63% (interestingly the Net Applications site seems to use IIS..)
Interestingly other countries seem to have a totally different market shares (wiser users?):
Opera is leading with 32% in Russia [statcounter.com], with 35% in Ukraine [statcounter.com], and 44% in Belarus [statcounter.com].
China saw a huge 7% decrease from 95% [statcounter.com] in just recent two months, with Maxthon picking up the same percent and Firefox as 3rd with only 3%. (Maxthon uses IE engine tho)
Google has huge ways to market Chrome; they can do tv/billboard ads, internet ads, include a notice on their sites (like they're doing with YouTube) and enable option to install it along with their other apps, and pay manufacturers to include Chrome with their pc's.
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From the StatCounter website:
"Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. "
Doesn't sound like a particularly reliable source of data to me.
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It does sound a bit more reliable than Net Applications tho, "which the company says encompasses data from some 160 million users per month.". Thats 31x larger source for data.
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Well that was a bit different metric, but the point still stands.
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No, StatCounter talks about pageviews, while Net Applications talks about users. I'm guessing most users tend to load more than 31 pages per month.
Either way, there are lies, damn lies, and web statistics.
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Possibly true--- the real question though, which I don't think either data source has made a convincing effort to account for, is how representative each sample is of the total population of internet users. An unbiased sample doesn't even need to be particularly large; a few thousand users would suffice for a very low margin of error. But millions of users in a skewed sample is still a skewed sample...
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Not really much wiser users; influence of people setting up OS on home machines (which are also much older on average)
See, in those post-soviet countries legal Windows is almost unheard of (shift towards laptops changes things of course, but only a bit; not only they are smaller part of market, notable number of them comes essentially without OS (FreeDOS? Some Linux booting into textmode? LiveCD? Without drivers for the hardware...). So somebody vaguely fluent in "computers" will set up pirated copy, usuall
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And I'm sure the BETA came out AFTER that, right?
IE 5.5 forever (Score:2, Funny)
I don't know about everyone else, but Internet Explorer 5.5 is working pretty well here on my Windows NT 4 machines. IE5.5 has the fastest ECMAscript execution, is reasonably easy to program for, and works on all of our 2000 and NT 4 desktops. Until the other browsers start supporting legacy Windows systems, IE5.5/6 will always have a place.
Time to go back to coding the web-based CSM in C with a COBOL backend on Fujitsu Cobol .NET...
Anonymous Sig 2.0:
MADONNA IS AMAZING! I LOVE MADONNA - EROTICA.MP16! [madonna.com]
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I know you are kidding, but that post still gave me nausea. :P
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I don't know about everyone else, but Internet Explorer 5.5 is working pretty well here on my Windows NT 4 machines.
Dude, you should try Windows Millennium - WAY easier on system resources than that hog NT4! Plus, as the name 'Millennium' implies, it's probably Y2K-compliant. Ish.
Worthless (Score:5, Informative)
Such metrics are almost always worthless. And such is the case here. Their methodology is fundamentally flawed, and you can't fix flawed methodology by just getting more of it.
Ars Technica notes [arstechnica.com], 'The company tracks OS and browser use among "member sites" that use Net Applications' tracking services, which the company says encompasses data from some 160 million users per month. This means that the only OS and browser numbers being tracked are those from users who specifically visit those member sites, which include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and InformationWeek. If specific demographics of users—like, say, Linux users—don't tend to read those types of sites, they are going to be underrepresented, and similarly, other demographics may be overrepresented.
It obviously could be the case that Chrome is used by people more likely to use those "member sites" than people who use Safari.
Unfortunately, Ars Technica then writes, 'That being said, browser metrics such as these aren't worthless. Even though they may be an inaccurate way to make comparisons between operating systems, they provide a good picture when it comes to trends within a specific OS. For example, Net Applications tracked the Mac OS at 7.3 percent at the end of 2007 and 9.63 percent at the end of 2008, showing more than a 2.6 percentage point jump in only a year for the Mac. In this sense, it doesn't matter if Mac users tend to visit the Wall Street Journal's website more than Linux users. The trend is clearly showing that Mac users, with all their unique browsing habits, are growing steadily.'
That's obviously false, because it doesn't take into account the fact that demographics can trend from year to year (perhaps the WSJ introduced a new, and popular, Mac-specific section on their web site).
Re:Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh, maybe the stats are "worthless" to sad OS/Browser fanboys who are arguing over every last 0.1%.
But the general trend of the web browser is useful and interesting. These kinds of browser stats are how we tracked the rise-and-fall of Netscape, the rise and stagnation of IE, and the rise of Firefox. People do use this sort of information for development and testing priority, flawed methodology and all.
And you will never have a non-"flawed" methodology for capturing this information, even for the users on your own site. (How do you identify a unique user? how do you know they aren't faking their user agent string? Who is a person and who is a bot? etc) If you can't deal with fuzzy information, don't leave the basement.
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Would you care to enlighten us as to what you mean by "we have a good sample"?
No. But I direct you to seek out any introductory text on sampling methodolgy.
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Also, to people who understand statistics.
None of these surveys claim to be a statistically valid sample, and nobody with half-a-brain believes that they are. Maybe its only you who is confused..
In fact, I can think of nothing more "worthless" than demanding data that does not exist and is effectively impossible to collect. It still is useful to see general browser trends across large pools of sites, despite that.
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None of these surveys claim to be a statistically valid sample, and nobody with half-a-brain believes that they are.
Exactly.
It still is useful to see general browser trends across large pools of sites, despite that.
Your last sentence disagrees with your first.
Hey Mr. Data Snob with the low UID. (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be implying that any bias or skew in your data sample renders it utterly useless. You know what? In the real world of web browsers you don't really have the alternatives of "statistically valid sample" and "not statistically valid sample." You have to choose between "not really statistically valid sample" and absolutely nothing whatsoever.
This is the real world, not academia. So take what you can get, realize it has limitations, and use it to form a tentative opinion on the relevant matters... or remain utterly ignorant and leave everything to chance. Your choice.
Re:Worthless (Score:5, Informative)
This means that the only OS and browser numbers being tracked are those from users who specifically visit those member sites, which include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and InformationWeek. If specific demographics of users--like, say, Linux users--don't tend to read those types of sites, they are going to be underrepresented,
The Moz Foundation is a Net Applications client.
Opera. Nokia. Adobe. Apple. Microsoft. RIM. D&B. CNN. Roche. Amazon.
The geek who hasn't ventured out of his grandma's basement in the last decade might be overlooked.
But the odds seem very good that you will be counted.
Re:Worthless (Score:4, Informative)
...of that list, very few of those sites are actually "general interest". They are strictly vendor sites that someone might visit when they need a driver or a plugin update. The rest of the time they should be pretty invisible.
CNN and Amazon are somewhat interesting. The rest represent clearly skewed user sets.
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the odds seem very good that you will be counted.
When you play the odds, you are admitting your sampling methodolgy is flawed.
This is similar to the Neilsen ratings. Sure, it might work for many people, but there will be significant demographics that will be left out, making the data not just generally worthless, but damaging.
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Bye, I'm off to set my User-Agent to elinks, and access the target websites over every tor exit node.
Talk about completely wasting your time while thinking you're being clever. While true it doesn't represent the usage 100%, the sample size is a little bit larger than that.
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They didn't say 160M "sites" they said 160M "users".
If say Google.com or Facebook.com alone were to throw in their numbers to this mix their entire data set would appear as a statistical anomaly.
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Still, I doubt that the sites visited by the 160 million people had a persistent skew in content changes.
You can't really know that without analyzing it, and if you don't do that -- and why would you take the time? -- you can't know it isn't skewing the data. Which means you can't trust the data.
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Huh. None of what you said had anything to do with what I said!
Chrome is on the Droid, too... (Score:2)
That probably gave the figures a big bump. Using it right now.
Jumping ship from IE? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure I know anyone who uses IE who even knows that Chrome exists.
I'd be willing to bet its almost entirely loss of Firefox users (like myself), as Firefox has become a bloated, buggy, slow pile of crap that would make IE6 proud.
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I love when people say X is bloated, but never mention what the bloat is.
Please, name something you can remove from the default install of Firefox.
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Please, name something you can remove from the default install of Firefox.
Integrated bloat is the worst kind.
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So what exactly is the bloat being referred to? I use chrome because I find it to be faster, but from recent experience Firefox 3.5 is faster than 3.0, which was much faster than 2.0, which was faster / better than 1.5, etc.
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XUL is a pretty big one. Then there's all the addon-like features that Firefox started to put into its main version, like microformats, an RSS reader, etc. More here [wired.com]
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Whatever it is that's using 450MB of RAM and chewing up 5x the amount of time loading pages.
That's a good place to start.
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If the FF install was 450MB of RAM, that wold be bloat. The fact that when open and running, Firefox might occupy a 450MB footprint isn't necessarily bloat, but either poor programming (if the RAM usage slows the system down) GOOD programming (if the RAM usage speeds the system up -- there's no point in having 4/8GB of RAM in your system if the applications never use it) or just a necessary reality (if you have 50 tabs open, with youtube clips and huge modern pages inside, they're gonna take up memory, no
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I find that most of Firefox's "bloat" comes from extensions. A brand new install of Firefox, particularly the more recent betas, starts up very quickly but as soon as you start installing certain extensions its start up time becomes very slow. This is in stark contrast with Chrome 4.x which is fast even with a lot of extensions. (I have 17 installed in Chrome on my netbook and it still flys.)
Re:Jumping ship from IE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Jumping ship from IE? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure I know anyone who uses IE who even knows that Chrome exists.
I use IE sometimes; there's stuff I try to use that doesn't work in FF or Chrome, especially at work, where government sites still don't work well with either (CAC-enabled DoD sites, especially).
I'd be willing to bet its almost entirely loss of Firefox users (like myself), as Firefox has become a bloated, buggy, slow pile of crap that would make IE6 proud.
I've switched to Chrome most of the time on my Windows box at work, and another here at home. Am currently using FF on this box, because I don't use it all that much. On my macs, I use Safari.
But the bigger sisue is that WebKit/KHTML is now a better core than Gecko, and will probably surpass Gecko-based browsers at some point in the not-too-distant future. This is especially true when you consider that a large portion of the mobile browser market is now WebKit-based (Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android), and the Gecko/FF port to Win32 was damn near unusable when I used it last (this past summer, before I bought my iPhone).
Re:Jumping ship from IE? (Score:5, Informative)
> But the bigger sisue is that WebKit/KHTML is now a better core than Gecko
Based on what metric? It uses more memory, is faster in some cases and slower in others, is easier to hack in some ways. It also just provides a renderer, as opposed to an entire browser. So which is better depends on what you're trying to do and how much effort you want to expend on the non-renderer parts of your app (e.g. to use webkit you have to provide your own http stack and so forth).
If you just want to embed a non-browser HTML renderer that you're going to feed data into, then webkit is better, sure. That's what it's designed for; it's not what Gecko is designed for.
Re:Jumping ship from IE? (Score:5, Informative)
One other note... Webkit and Gecko have different priorities in other ways too: for example, correct behavior of CSS selectors in the face of DOM mutations is a top priority for Gecko (and hence behavior is correctin all the cases I know of) and is not for Webkit (and hence the behavior is not correct in various cases; "for now we will just worry about the common case, since it's a lot trickier to get the second case right" as the Webkit code comments say). There are various other areas in which Webkit is behind Gecko in terms of standards support, and vice versa. They seem to have different future development priorities (e.g. in terms of things like SMIL vs CSS Animations).
It's also not clear which is developing faster, and that aspect is subject to rapid change. I think at this point there are more full-time engineers employed to work on Webkit than on the equivalent parts of Gecko. That may or may not continue to be the case.
Another interesting question, of course, is IE. IE9 has a bigger development team than either Webkit or Gecko, from what I can tell, and they're rapidly working on closing the existing gaps. IE's support for CSS2.1 is better than either Webkit's _or_ Gecko's in my testing (easier to do in some ways because the spec has kept changing so in some cases Webkit/Gecko implement earlier versions). Of course IE has a lot of catching up to do in other areas.
It'll be an interesting next few years all around.
Does IEtab not work? (Score:2)
Is there a reason you can't use IEtab on FF? At least you can ditch the malware-magnet IE application frame, even if you don't ditch the trident rendering engine.
Jumping ship from IE? Not exactly... (Score:2)
"but may also be due to users jumping ship from IE."
Some of us jumped ship from Firefox. It's served us well these past few years, but since 3 came out, it's been increasingly buggy and memory hoggish.
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Features = bloat.
Remember Phoenix? Light,fast, nothing else.
It morphed into Firefox which is featureful and buggier. (I like the features so I don't run FF on slow PCs.)
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I'm not sure I know anyone who uses IE who even knows that Chrome exists.
That's not the point. (also, there are Chrome billboards everywhere here in the city) This is the point:
Bank of America has apparently recently added Google Chrome to their list of officially supported browsers.
I called this! On Slashdot!
(In a Chrome OS topic, but still) [slashdot.org]
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Performance-wise, they're both blazing fast even on a modest single-core/1GB system.
Just to pick up on this point... it might be something funny with Ubuntu 9.10, or maybe I've been using Chromium a bit too much, but Firefox just seems very sluggish these days. I've recently upgraded my main computer from a 2.8GHz Celeron (2GB RAM) to a 2.6Ghz Core i5 (4GB RAM), and Firefox still takes a few seconds to start up! It's true I do run a number of extensions, and I do have a fairly rediculous number of bookmarks in FF, but even on a fresh OS install with vanilla FF, it's still not fast.
I'm no
Chrome on Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Usage_tracking [wikipedia.org]
There is some usage tracking going on no matter how your options are set. We only have Google's word that this contains 'non-identifying' information, which they've often defined, in the past, to include IP address, OS version, ... which is sent every 24 hours, on searching for anything with Google, and other 'significant events' which don't seem to be defined.
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Net Applications (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, Net Applications, the place whose surveys Slashdotters pick and choose to believe in depending on whose doing well in the survey.
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depending on whose doing
depending on who's doing (who is).
That'll be £5 please.
What matters in fact? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Browsers? As in all versions of IE? I can't think of any other such browsers worth considering.
And yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
I still have to start up Opera or FireFox because I have too many sites I visit that just do not work in chrome.
But yet, for a netbook, Chrome is the best choice because it uses the smallest amount of real estate for non-browser window information.
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Apart from customization mentioned already by other poster, I'm surprised that Opera Turbo, very low resource usage, definitely felt on slow hardware and built-in syncing weren't enough to keep you with Opera on a netbook.
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But yet, for a netbook, Chrome is the best choice because it uses the smallest amount of real estate for non-browser window information.
By default, yes. After configuring, not necessarily. Firefox's UI is *very* configurable, and I wouldn't be surprised if fans of other browsers can make similar claims for their preferred browsers. I expect most people who care enough about their screen real estate to chose their browser based on that fact, would also be willing to learn to configure their browser to get even more real estate, thereby nullifying any advantage Chrome may have by default. I own an eeepc 701 - you know, with the 7" screen.
Nothing to do with the OS X version (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary:
This may be partially explained by the release of the Chrome beta on Mac
As an Mac user who's tried out the OS X version of Chrome, I can assure you that no one is abandoning Safari for it. While it's a decent enough browser for a beta, there are enough annoying things about it to make me wait until the next version to decide whether or not it will replace Safari (or Firefox; I switch between the two) as my primary browser.
If anything, it's more likely that the relative few Windows users who have been trying Safari for Windows have switched over to Chrome, at least temporarily.
Wrong. (Score:2, Informative)
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I have replaced Safari with Chrome as my default browser on Mac.
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I'm a mac user. I switched from safari to chrome. My wife switched from ff to chrome.
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I dropped Safari like a hot rock as soon as Chrome came out for Mac. Safari is buggy, slow, crashes all the time and is inflexible enough that it really gets on my tits. I'm glad to see the back of it.
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I have indeed all but abandoned Safari in favor of Chrome, warts and all. While Safari does well in synthetic benchmarks, it chews up memory and slows to a beach-ball inducing crawl. Firefox is slightly better, but suffers from essentially the same problem.
Chrome's process-per-tab model, on the other hand, really seems to work as promised. I've been using it on three computers since the beta c
I've seen an amazing rise in traffic from Chrome (Score:2)
Incidentally... (Score:2)
Everyone but MS grits teeth, welcomes Chrome (Score:3, Funny)
"We absolutely promise that we only want to completely screw over Microsoft with this, and certainly not Mozilla Firefox," said Google's Sundar Pichai. "That we put a pile of our sponsored Mozilla developers on the project is completely irrelevant. We're not evil, remember."
"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. "That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement."
Microsoft was unfazed. "Browsers don't need to be integrated with online apps," said marketing developer Ian Moulster. "Certainly not like the operating system ... I'll just get back to you."
Google's new browser will give you their web and email services, photo processing, mapping, office applications that will run in said browser and will make you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.
Pichai stressed that Google would maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department of whatever the browser accessed concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. "We're Google. We know where you live. In a completely not evil way. Sponsored link: Get Chrome Browsers on google.com. Or we'll make you use Windows Live."
(link) [newstechnica.com]
Wait for survey of IT managers (Score:2)
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Congrats on having the same sort of doughbagery advertising we've come
to expect from Microsoft and Apple, do you feel like you really belong now?
That we really, really like you now?
This is exactly why I don't understand Google fanboys. They think it's some hippy, "don't be evil", and cool group of "indie" people, while in fact it's just like every other huge corporation doing the best they can to make more and more money. They just have good PR people, which really isn't a surprise since they're basically an advertising company with a technology side to enable their main business.
Re:Was waiting for Chrome on OSX until... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the lesson Microsoft taught the world: being perceived as evil is bad for business. Apple, Google, and so on all invest heavily in public relations in order to avoid the fate of Microsoft. That doesn't mean that the substance of their business methods is any different.
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Apple, Google, and so on all invest heavily in public relations in order to avoid the fate of Microsoft. That doesn't mean that the substance of their business methods is any different.
If it were any different, we'd see changes in leadership. CEOs remain CEOs because they continue to pursue profit above all. That's part of the system that's not likely to change, whether you like it or not. The challenge is to articulate a business model that makes "do no evil" (or, at least, "be perceived as doing no evil") into a profitable action, and Google and Apple have successfully convinced many people that they have done that.
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It makes much more sense if you replace Google with Apple in your comment ( - except for "don't be evil" part).
That doesn't make a lot of sense, as Apple isn't an advertising company, and very few people believe Apple isn't a big company out to make money.
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Unlike the others, Google actually innovates. Takes risks. Some ideas flop, others are hugely successful. Microsoft and Yahoo just keep turning out the same old shit because they are inert and unwilling to innovate. Sure, they add a feature to widget X or rebrand widget Y, but they have not created any new
Re:Was waiting for Chrome on OSX until... (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at Google as a developer for many years. I have also worked at other huge corporations, like Adobe and Xerox. Google is nothing like every other huge corporation. They are exactly like some hippie, "don't be evil" group of socially conscious software developers. That's because that's what they are, both in the engineering department and all the way up to top management, including Larry, Sergei, and Eric. Not saying this is true of the sales department, but they're not in charge; the developers are. If Google were an advertising company, the sales department would be in charge.
They search engine came first. Of course something's gotta pay the bills, and the search engine by itself is an expense, not a source of income. If Google were an advertising company, the ad system would have come first, like it did with Overture.
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You mean the Chrome browser that uses WebKit, which is an Apple-funded improvement over KHTML?
Ads on the internet? (Score:2)
I have no idea [mozilla.org] what you're talking about [google.com].
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They just have good PR people
Because there's no way that Google could ever be popular simply because they have good products and services.
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It's like the difference between a guy trying to hit on every girl he meets, and a rapist. Both try to maximize the amount of sex they have, but they both go through *very* different paths to do so.
They put out cool tech, and (usually) they don't try to cripple them for their own benefit, as they realize there's more money to be had in having more users and a bigger market than in providing an "unified" experience or whatever's the newest excuse Microsoft and Apple throw at us whenever they play the lock-in
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Google is (and has always been) an advertisement company.
You are expected to live with it, or circumvent it (it's not that hard)
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Ha, you know that's actually really funny because I've seen those ads too. And I use Google Chrome on a Mac! I'm thinking "Jeez, that's annoying, but even more so because I'm actually using the browser to view the ad!"
So basically, you're saying you're extra annoyed because ads for Google products are not very specifically targeted. They are not very specifically targeted because it is Google advertising using other advertising companies, instead of their own system. You've pretty much just made a comment that confirms Google's business model as valuable. Now all we need is for commercial ventures like Hulu to start letting Google handle which ad gets played for which user, so the ads will be more appropriate to you. May
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Really? Where?
Are you surprised. Anyone can get more users by using their online ad monopoly like that.