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Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

May 25, 2002  By Doc Searls
 in
After a search on Google yielded more results for Linux than Windows, it was easy to get carried away.

Yesterday I was doing some research on Google and thought I'd compare the number of results for different words and phrases. Here are a few of the surprising results:

  • Linux, 47,100,000

  • Windows, 43,800,000

  • UNIX, 12,200,000

  • Open Source, 2,740,000

  • Free software, 1,760,000

That's how far I got before the kid came home from school. But when I picked the job back up this morning, the results had changed:

  • Linux, 51,700,000

  • Windows, 46,700,000

  • UNIX, 13,000,000

  • Open Source, 2,810,000

  • Free software, 1,780,000

That piqued my curiosity, so I began searching for a whole pile of words. The results might not be meaningful, but they're still interesting:

  • US, 244,000,000

  • site, 200,000,000

  • UK, 75,300,000

  • sex, 82,600,000

  • love, 49,800,000

  • Canada, 35,100,000

  • Microsoft, 29,200,000

  • Japan, 26,800,000

  • HP (including Hewlett Packard), 25,560,000

  • death, 24,800,000

  • fun, 24,200,000

  • Australia, 22,300,000

  • China, 21,900,000

  • Germany, 18,500,000

  • England, 16,400,000

  • IBM, 16,300,000

  • Russia, 10,800,000

  • GNU, 9,040,000

  • Debian, 9,620,000

  • Apple, 8,940,000

  • fear, 8,800,000

  • drugs, 8,170,000

  • coffee, 7,830,000

  • commands, 7,370,000

  • Finland, 6,920,000

  • Solaris, 6,540,000

  • Compaq, 5,460,000

  • chicken, 5,100,000

  • smoke, 4,840,000

  • GNOME, 4,810,000

  • United States, 4,610,000

  • KDE, 4,540,000

  • OS X, 4,060,000

  • BSD, 3,190,000

  • SourceForge, 3,800,000

  • SuSE, 3,660,000

  • beef, 3,000,000

  • Mandrake, 2,840,000

  • foo, 2,180,000

  • girlfriend, 2,150,000

  • Red Hat, 2,140,000

  • Slashdot, 2,080,000

  • VA Software (including VA Linux), 2,043,000

  • Bill Clinton, 1,670,000

  • penguin, 1,510,000

  • boyfriend, 1,450,000

  • George W. Bush, 1,260,000

  • MacOS, 1,150,000

  • Slackware, 1,050,000

  • rock & (also and) roll, 894,000

  • Caldera, 787,000

  • Al Gore, 644,000

  • Linus Torvalds, 638,000

  • VA Linux, 553,000

  • melon, 525,000

  • Albert Einstein, 510,000

  • LinuxPPC, 294,000

  • Turbolinux, 250,000

Okay, that's enough. I have real work to do.

Speaking of which, I'm always looking for numbers to stick in the next LJ Index and elsewhere in the UpFront section of Linux Journal. If you have any you want to send along or point us to, please do.

Doc Searls is senior editor of Linux Journal.

email: doc@ssc.com

______________________

Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal

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Hey dammit you forgot ...

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 07/23/2002 - 01:00.

... some incredibly useless figures:

0. Sweden (googlesearch): 9,890,000

1. Current version of "The Great Linux Client Thread" on the NeverWinterNights forums(1): 6

2. Number of posts on each page of above thread: 15

3. Average Number of pages in each version of above thread(2): ~27

4. Current number of viewings of thread v6.0: 2776

5. Current number of pages in v6.0: 8

6. Average number of spinoff threads per version: 5

(1): http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewforum.html?forum=42

(2): Each thread is locked by a moderator when it gets too long, now the posters has managed to get a "sticky" thread.

P.S. something tells me that Linux gamers are pretty vocal. D.S.

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 06/06/2002 - 01:00.

This is even more interesting if you consider the fact that Windows is a generic term with more than one meaning, whereas Linux is not. So how many of those Google searches are actually pointing to construction supply businesses instead of Microsoft products? :-)

Interesting Google Numbers!

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/29/2002 - 01:00.

Something interesting to note, on google searching for just Linux gives us the Linux Journal Website at the 5th place (or 6th, depending on your point of view), ahead of quite a few Linux Distros.

Another piece of statistics, on google, people search for:

Linux around 588,100 times a day.

Microsoft: 238,700

Windows: 776,100 (Sorry Doc. Searls!)

Unix: 119,800

Open Source: 13,800

Linux Journal: 400

Linux Magazine: 200

Linux Sex: 0

Linux Security: 2200

Redht: 44700

Debian: 22400

Caldera: 2800

Suse: 15300

Mandrake: 16000

GNOME: 17500

KDE: 17100

BSD: 7700

OS X: 7200

AIX: 15100

Solaris: 80100

Slashdot: 2200

Tux: 3500

Linus Torvalds:200, Linus: 3500, Torvalds: 400

Bill Gates: 9700

Stallman: 0

ESR: 700, Eric Raymond: 600

Alan Cox: 700

Kernel: 37900

Vim: 3900

emacs: 19100

Apache: 61400

IIS: 30500

Sendmail: 26500

qmail: 8100

gimp: 7900

netscape: 106800

konqueror: 900

opera: 55100 (might be a musical opera too!)

galeon: 1100

mozilla: 8600

mpg123: 1100

xmms: 2400

glibc: 2600

rpm: 41400

yast: 200

pine: 16200

elm: 3300

mutt:2900

ibm: 89900

hp: 122600

compaq: 56400

oracle: 132000

intel: 58300

amd: 36200

gcc: 19100

c++: 190800

java: 478200

perl: 118400

j2ee: 118400

ejb: 15400

python: 28500

corba: 13600

.Net: 397200

Are there any important keywords I missed? Nothing should be concluded from these figures except that nothing can be concluded from them. :))

Sumit Dhar

SLMsoft.com

Figures regarding how many times different terms are searched on

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/29/2002 - 01:00.

Something interesting to note, on google searching for just Linux gives us the Linux Journal Website at the 5th place (or 6th, depending on your point of view), ahead of quite a few Linux Distros.

Another piece of statistics, on google, people search for:

Linux around 588,100 times a day.

Microsoft: 238,700

Windows: 776,100 (Sorry Doc. Searls!)

Unix: 119,800

Open Source: 13,800

Linux Journal: 400

Linux Magazine: 200

Linux Sex: 0

Linux Security: 2200

Redht: 44700

Debian: 22400

Caldera: 2800

Suse: 15300

Mandrake: 16000

GNOME: 17500

KDE: 17100

BSD: 7700

OS X: 7200

AIX: 15100

Solaris: 80100

Slashdot: 2200

Tux: 3500

Linus Torvalds:200, Linus: 3500, Torvalds: 400

Bill Gates: 9700

Stallman: 0

ESR: 700, Eric Raymond: 600

Alan Cox: 700

Kernel: 37900

Vim: 3900

emacs: 19100

Apache: 61400

IIS: 30500

Sendmail: 26500

qmail: 8100

gimp: 7900

netscape: 106800

konqueror: 900

opera: 55100 (might be a musical opera too!)

galeon: 1100

mozilla: 8600

mpg123: 1100

xmms: 2400

glibc: 2600

rpm: 41400

yast: 200

pine: 16200

elm: 3300

mutt:2900

ibm: 89900

hp: 122600

compaq: 56400

oracle: 132000

intel: 58300

amd: 36200

gcc: 19100

c++: 190800

java: 478200

perl: 118400

j2ee: 118400

ejb: 15400

python: 28500

corba: 13600

.Net: 397200

Are there any important keywords I missed? Nothing should be concluded from these figures except that nothing can be concluded from them. :))

Sumit Dhar

SLMsoft.com

Linux Losses @ MSN

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/29/2002 - 01:00.

Hi,

Just thought I'd check out to see what www.msn.com has to say about all this hoopla.

windows 1508

linux 504

Sorry guys, guess we'll still have to wait...

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/29/2002 - 01:00.

ixquick.com (i believe is superior to google) gives

linux 49,800,005

windows 45,600,005

marmalade 229,003

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 05/27/2002 - 01:00.

"linux journal" - 119,000

"linux magazine" - 84,000

A nude woman, in a bath, holding a bit of your linux...

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 05/28/2002 - 01:00.

Sex, sex, sex, we've got to get sex into it somehow...

"linux sex" 328,000

"linux orgasm" 3,820

"linux foreplay" 1,180

So... Google proves that Linux nuts are all insensitive zealots? Simpson's individual penguinettes, anyone? The `now' penguin!

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 05/26/2002 - 01:00.

Chicken and smoke are neck and neck. Woo-hoo!! I can hardly wait for next week's results so I'll know what to put my money on when I go to pick up my groceries.

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 05/25/2002 - 01:00.

I think there is something to be said for rounding the real total off on google... I mean, the internet is a virtual place, it isn't like the numer no matter how exact would be the same for more than 2 seconds, so who cares about the last three zeros... they are basically insignificant digits I guess... placeholders is all...

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 05/25/2002 - 01:00.

How odd. Every one of your search terms ends in at least three zeros.

That's quite unlikely.

Re: Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 05/31/2002 - 01:00.

Google rounds off gigantic results. Like it'll say 'Results 1-10 of about 300,000'.