Survey: Linux users love Google, ignore Bing
Linux users are known for being a somewhat finicky lot. Despite broader application support for Windows and a better user experience in Mac OS X, Linux "desktop" users swear by the open-source operating system (and sometimes swear at its competitors).
It's therefore somewhat telling that Linux users overwhelmingly choose Google as their preferred search engine, according to data released today by Chitika, an online advertising network. Chitika analyzed data from 163 million searches across its advertising network between July 30 and August 16, and came up with the following:
(Credit:
Dan Ruby, Chitika)
Despite the concerns about Google and privacy and despite Microsoft's rising relevance in search through its Bing "decision engine," Google wins over Linux users 94.61 percent of the time. While it's not surprising that Linux users would shun a Microsoft-sponsored search engine, it is surprising that they so heavily congregate around just one search engine.
After all, this is the crowd that has created (literally) thousands of Linux distributions. For a community so devoted to choice, it's telling that such a disparate community would unify on Google search. Perhaps Yahoo's apparent willingness to prostrate itself before Microsoft has turned off the Linux crowd, but there are other alternatives.
Open source, after all, is all about alternatives. There are open-source alternatives to Google Analytics (Piwik, Open-Tube, etc.), Google Search Appliance (Lucene/Solr), Google Docs (OpenGoo), Google Earth (World Wind), and more.
But for search, the Linux contingent of the open-source community seems settled on Google.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I don't think it is so much "Linux shunning Microsoft" as in Google has worked in the past an is still the better search engine I have found for putting in error messages or description of problems and getting relevant results. I use Google more times than anything else to help with ASP.NET coding!
And if it is to "shun Microsoft" then why does just under 80% of Windows users use Google?
Bing has some nice features, I have seen, but for most of my researching Google has done a better job. Plus Google gets the benefit that Windows does over Linux.. familiarity. People are familiar with Google so why change? It's the same rational as why people stick with Windows over OS X or Linux.
Incidentally, I just read a report that IE6 is still the most used browser, even though it is the least safe. Change can be a good thing.
So now you say 0.1%, in the past you and others like you have said 1%, and Steve Ballmer has been quoted giving a figure comparable to Apple's market share:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple
So which is it? Is Ballmer confused? Are you confused?
Great link but that needs some context: Ballmer was including enterprise/server use there. Linux, as a server, can be seen as a threat to Windows server. Linux as a desktop OS is not seen as a thread.
The Linux use % changes depending on whether we're talking about desktop, server or both. Here, search engine stats only apply to desktop use which is considerably lower than the server % numbers.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
Like every default choice that gets made in a user interface, the default just has to be good enough for most users for it to be a reasonable choice. Google is a reasonable choice and the minority of users who care one way or the other change the defaults. A year from now would Bing be a reasonable choice for most people? What will be interesting to see is what Mozilla does when their contract to use Google as the default in firefox is up again next time. I believe that's in 2011. If Mozilla ends up switching to a different default search provider, that will be the moment to watch to be able to distinguish between active choice and default-dont-care.
In many distros the default browser is Konquerer, yet Firefox reigns supreme. Why? Because Firefox is infinitely better. Konquerer is a great file manager and is wonderful for view man pages, viewing web pages? Not so much.
>>>>You're not wrong, but there's more to it than that. 93 out of 100 computer users run Windows, and another 5 run Mac OS (1 in 100 run Linux, and the rest use an iPhone or something else). The average "computer" user doesn't run Linux at all, and would not be able to do much with it if they did. They couldn't watch a DVD movie because they wouldn't have a clue how to make them play. And if you do - which automatically makes you an above-average user - it can take time to find the repository link for the CSS libraries for your particular distro and version.
That said, I too use Google in Firefox, under both Linux and Windows. Most of the time, it's under Windows.
That said, I also believe there are explanations that the author has overlooked. While most Windows users browse the Web in IE, and usually have to switch to Google from Yahoo! or Bing (depending on the OEM) or install an alternative browser; Linux and Mac users actually get Google in their respective, default browsers right out of the box. This being so, the choice of Yahoo! or Bing is in fact much more significant for Linux and Mac users than for Windows users.
In short, I happen to disagree with the author's observations, but not because I think he is catering to "MS fanboys" or patronizing Linux users. And just for the record, I use both Windows and Linux.
[CNET editors' note: Promotional link deleted]
MS is a company that depends on at least 90% market share and increasing market size in order to remain profitable, especially considering its dependence on windows and office to subsidize most of their other businesses. Bing is probably losing money, they are doing this to keep Google from growing enough to threaten them with web applications. It's the same thing IBM did, hence the crappy and underpowered PC (8088 was quite wimpy compared to other systems at the time...). If Linux distro's were to gain 5% of the market at windows' expense, MS would lose a boat load of money and probably start having to downsize. Hence why they scrambled to sell XP so cheaply on netbooks. MS needs the computer user more than the computer user needs them. They know it, but don't want the user to know it.
Not only that, Linux users can't really help those 90% of the people because they use Windows, and quite often, Linux users space themselves from using Windows in every way possible, so they have little or nothing they can help others running Windows with... Because they know nothing about Windows anymore.
Some of these Linux users are very proficient with all operating systems (they had to choose to learn and weigh the benefits of not only Linux over Windows, but also some distros over another) while some of these Linux users are the individuals whose friend turned them onto Linux, and whose friend gets support from.
There are savvy and not-savvy individuals across the spectrum using every system. It just depends on their percentage. I was a Windows user before I was a Linux user. I doubt very many people are born and raised with Linux as their first operating system.
"Many people in that 90% are not stupid." True, but I would guess an absurdly large percentage (though not necessarily STUPID) have no idea how a PC works, or do not have the time or care enough to know how to manage or manage how their PC works.
"You think just because they use Linux they know computers." As I said above, that's not necessarily true, but I'm going to also guess it's a large percentage of Linux users who know how to use a computer. Even if some users provide support to individuals whom they installed Linux for, almost every person I know who runs the OS are first-generation Linux users, who have learned the OS on their own (and who already knew how to assemble a PC on their own).
Relevant to the article, though - For the savvy users - Google works. For the non-savvy users - Google is default in Firefox.
In Windows - For the savvy users - They switched to Google (or installed Firefox and Google worked). For the non-savvy users - They use IE with Bing as default (likely), until someone gets them to install Firefox
I think what's important to analyze here is the concept of default and non-default. A lot of people will use what's default. If you buy a PC, and it has Windows, you'll use Windows. It has IE? You'll use IE. It has Bing? You'll use Bing. A lot of users have learned to install another browser or change their search engine, but how many of the Bing/IE/(or even Google in Firefox) users "chose it" or "didn't choose an alternative."
Hardly, the usage numbers for Linux is lowballed. I have 3 laptops that came preinstalled with Windows, not one has windows on it.
The number is probably closer to 10%.
That said, remember that Net Applications doesn't go by how many OEM and retail copies of Windows were sold, how many copies of OS X were sold, how many copies of Ubuntu were downloaded, ordered from Canonical, etc. They don't count how many Windows machines became hackintoshes, how many machines an XP VLK or Ubuntu disc was used on, or how many machines were trashed, recycled, or stripped for parts. They count Web statistics. These numbers may not accurately represent global install bases, but they do represent Internet-connected machines. And that's all that matters in this instance; standalones don't use ANY search engine. :)
Devices sell when they are cool.
Search engines sell when they are simple, fast, and efficient.
Cool works for certain things.
I don't think it is meant for Search engines.
BTW, Linux owns you.
This site is hosted on Linux and Google delivers search via lInux
No point in putting down what you use everyday..
When you speak about Linux users, you are speaking about some 30 million people. We can't always agree on everything. Although, I do agree with FF2009 about this particular issue. Simplicity is important for search engines. I want to find what I'm looking for without any distractions. Saying that doesn't make me a hypocrite.
In other words Bing is poorly implemented, which is the opposite of what Linux users like.
Besides, what was the point of this survey anyways? Asking a bunch of Linux users whether they use a MS service isn't exactly useful to anyone. Sure, it will stroke the egos of a few but even they would have to admit it's a stupid survey. The results were pretty much fixed and expected. What next, a survey asking MS employees what OS they use? How about asking Apple workers which computer they own? CNET can follow it all up with a news headline that pretends to be surprised at the answers.
You'll tend to see more Linux jerks on this website, mainly because of the subjects that C|NET News covers. "Market share" and stuff like that. True, we will tell people to "read the manual" sometimes or "search google", but that's so we don't have to type something that's already in newbie terms somewhere else on the web.
Microsoft (note the s) makes OKAY products, but I don't like the way they operate. They're slick and dirty. http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/
(And my basic argument I like to bring up against usability) - have you tried reinstalling Windows to the point of usability where you started off? (And a bonus question - do you keep a written list of your installed/uninstalled software and the URL where you can find it again at a later date?)
I typed M$ before I was a Linux user, btw.
PS : dont use numbers you dont know about : 0.5% of what computers? where? how? when? what's your source? What's the uncertainty on that number?
Anyway, having said that, if you're intrigued by the idea of a decision engine and don't want to use Bing, I'd suggest http://www.hunch.com (no I'm not affiliated with them in any way- I just heard about Hunch and started using it.. then a few days later Bing hit the news. hmm)
The answer you are looking for is momentum.
It is of course momentum slowing down,due to a lack of innovation and good products.
- by slumbergod August 21, 2009 11:12 AM PDT
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