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1. Comment - Firefox Tops 400 Million Downloads

   (Sep 9, 2007 - 1:13 PM)

   The downloads themselves are not an indicator of usage, it's impossible to tell from that. The percentage of user's from a specific country is gathered by special web-software that records the IP addresses of visitors and detects which browser the visitor is using. The IP address allows the software to determine which country the visitor is from. Every Internet provider gets a pool of IP numbers, which number in the thousands and even millions (depends on the size of the provider). The software uses databases which include these number pools, and the provider and country to which they belong (AT&T is in the USA for example). I'm explaining this in very simple terms so that the layman can understand. I work in the IT sector, and we use these methods all the time. We gather all types of statistics, but the browser and country of origin are usually most important. You can even gather information that will tell which operating system the visitor is using you and if they are surfing via a military or government network. The trick here is to actually collect the data and share it with others. Small webmasters either won't collect the data or bother sharing it. It's usually larger organizations, like Google, who will do this. They also have a financial interest in doing so. At the same time, they receive massive traffic, therefore they provide the best opportunity for gathering accurate statistics.