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How Company Employees Use The Web 415

Posted by timothy from the just-keeping-track-of-the-competition-sir dept.
An anonymous reader submits "VisitorVille Intelligence has released information on how employees of several large companies use the web based on their monitoring of thousands of websites. Presumably using IP address blocks, they group company employees together to produce some interesting facts and figures: Microsoft employees use Google for their searches 66% of the time, but MSN Search only 20% of the time, and Firefox is their second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer 6's whopping 98.76% share. Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time and 21% use a Mozilla or Firefox browser. Apple employees like Google best and 68% use Safari. 91% of Internap employees use Mozilla or Firefox, Deutsche Telekom AG employees are the biggest users of Linux, and 39% of Sun Microsystems employees use SunOS. Other groups of interest to Slashdot readers include: The White House, the United Nations, The New York Times, Red Hat, and IBM."
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How Company Employees Use The Web More

How Company Employees Use The Web

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  • Slashdot employees (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:28PM (#11260397) Homepage
    It's nice to see slashdot employees don't do anything [visitorville.com] on the internet :) Full company list is here [visitorville.com] by the way.

    And IBM is using Windows exclusively [visitorville.com]?

    I wonder why it doesn't show the top 5/10 visited sites.

    • IBM employees (Score:5, Informative)

      by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:32PM (#11260424)
      And IBM is using Windows exclusively?

      Well, only if myself, about half of my immediate colleagues, the Linux Technology Center people, all the people on the internal linux mailing lists and probably quite a few others don't count :-)

      Given that one data point looks a bit borked, I'm wondering about the rest of the data...

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:28PM (#11260399)
    85% of Slashdot users use windows, and 60% still use internet explorer.

    • Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )
      But most are smart enough to use it safely, unlike your average Windows/IE user.

      • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:57PM (#11260586) Homepage
        But most are smart enough to use it safely, unlike your average Windows/IE user.

        But abstinence (Not using Windows/IE) is the only truly safe way.
      • Yeah, but I bet the average /. reader visits plenty of p0rn, not particularly safe with IE.

      • Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by drsmithy ( 35869 )
        But most are smart enough to use it safely, unlike your average Windows/IE user.

        You think ? I'd be surprised if even 10% of /.'s IE-users aren't running as an admin, or are running their browser with a dedicated limited-rights account.

    • Quite. Most of us have very little choice as to what we can use.I work in a company that uses Windows for all email etc. Some internal packages are IE based and won't work with other browsers. As a result I have not been bothered to set up a different browser etc. At home I use Linux and Opera.

      What is interesting though is that almost 20% of MS employees run non-IE. I expect a good percentage of MS employees live the faith and are Windows/IE zealots, I expect MS corporate websites are only IE friendly. It's

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by Atrax ( 249401 )
    This report shows the top search engines used by users from Microsoft Corp:

    Sorry, no data available on this company/organization for this specific topic.

    ??

  • best results... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spac3manspiff ( 839454 ) <spac3manspiff@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:33PM (#11260430) Journal
    Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time

    That means when the employees actually use what they make... it must be good.

    • Re:best results... (Score:4, Funny)

      by sqrt(2) ( 786011 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:35PM (#11260451) Journal
      Let me tell you about the years I spent working in a sausage factory...

    • Re:best results... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:36PM (#11260458) Homepage
      Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time That means when the employees actually use what they make... it must be good.

      But also imagine how fast it would be to have Google and its entire internet cache on your LAN?

      • Results 1 - 10 of about 56,400 for yeppoon site:au. (0.16 seconds)
        Dude, I don't think it could get much faster than that...
        • That's the time the search took; it took a little bit longer for it to load the page for you than it would for them.

          • Re:best results... (Score:3, Informative)

            by kesuki ( 321456 )
            Yeah It could take almost 40 ms less to load the page. that's .04 seconds BTW.
            My current latency to Google 47MS to my router .2ms
            So assuming you're on the lan over at google, your latency should be around .2 to 7 MS depending on length of ethernet, number of switches you're hopping through etc... I'm going 20 feet, to get .2 MS, I'm assuming that google is in a building larger than 20'x20' wide, so presumablly if you've got 1000 feet of cable, and latency remains constant per foot of ethernet the latency co

            • Re:best results... (Score:3, Informative)

              by pcmanjon ( 735165 )
              " Yeah It could take almost 40 ms less to load the page. that's .04 seconds BTW.
              My current latency to Google 47MS to my router .2ms
              So assuming you're on the lan over at google, your latency should be around .2 to 7 MS depending on length of ethernet, number of switches you're hopping through etc... I'm going 20 feet, to get .2 MS, I'm assuming that google is in a building larger than 20'x20' wide, so presumablly if you've got 1000 feet of cable, and latency remains constant per foot of ethernet the latency

      • how come (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:54PM (#11260573) Homepage Journal
        when people see that IE is used 98% of the time by MS, it's becasue MS doesn't give them enough freedom, but when google employees use google 100% of the time it's becasue it is a better product?

        Personal, I have started find google to be less and less useful. I actualy used HOTBOT last week to get result Google wasn't returning.
        And yes, I was as surprised as you are the hotbot is still around.
        • Its not so much a question of quality, but can an average person use something different. When most people by a computer it comes with Windows on it and I'm willing to bet that most of them are not confident enough to change operating systems because there are some substantial risks involved (ie accidently wiping out all your data, installing the wrong drivers for certain components may fry them, etc.) whereas changing a search engine is as simple as going to a different site. Not that hard really, you ca

        • Re:how come (Score:5, Funny)

          by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @12:09AM (#11260929) Journal
          I used Firefox exclusively at MS. And I didn't try to hide it. Most MS people just kinda shrug about IE's problems. "Let some guy in India fix it"
      • .21 seconds vs .43 seconds is sure the hell a lot faster...

    • Re:best results... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Although it's best to also use the competitions' products regularly, to find out where their strengths, and your weaknesses, are...

    • Re:best results... (Score:5, Funny)

      by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy@nOSPAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:47PM (#11260525)
      That means when the employees actually use what they make... it must be good.

      You may wish to reconsider that statement in light of Microsoft's extensive and well-known policy of "eating their own dog food" :).

  • ab0rken? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) * on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:33PM (#11260431) Homepage
    Either VisitorVille responds to slashdotting by saying it doesn't have data, or some companies were *really* fast with their privacy injunctions.

    • Re:ab0rken? (Score:4, Funny)

      by kesuki ( 321456 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:28PM (#11260712) Journal
      Actually What I got was Dear Slashdotter,

      We're sorry we missed you.

      In your infinite bounty, you have brought down our server.

      Please check back once the /. effect has subsided. Here's the URL to bookmark: http://intelligence.visitorville.com

      Thanks for your interest!

      Robert Savage, Mayor, VisitorVille

  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bhadreshl ( 841411 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:33PM (#11260434)
    97% of NY Times employees use this [bugmenot.com] to log into the NY Times [nytimes.com] website

  • Sun employees hate their daddy? (Score:3, Funny)

    by overbyj ( 696078 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:33PM (#11260436)
    only 39% of Sun employees use Sun OS??? That seems awfully low to me. Granted, I am sure they do use Windows and Linux (at least their version) for various and sunder things around the office but 39%.....there is something very unusual about that.

    If you can't preach to the choir there, how are you going to preach to the masses??

  • Stats show... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wcitechnologies ( 836709 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:33PM (#11260437)
    ...that 100% of Microsoft employees use sol.exe.

  • For Free (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sg3000 ( 87992 ) * <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:34PM (#11260438)
    I admitted just did a quick glance, but I didn't find their figures to be credible. I looked the company I work for, and it was listed as 100% Windows 2000 and 100% IE6.

    However, we have a mix of Windows 2000, Sun Workstations, Linux machines, and more than a few Macintoshes. Our IT-supported browser is Netscape, not Internet Explorer. So I expected a little more diversity than what they're showing.

    Also, their web site says they provide "company specific marketing information". Technically they are providing "market information" not "marketing information". There is a difference. "Market information" means just raw data (which is what they're providing). "Marketing information" means information that helps you make a decision: Should we avoid Flash because too few users at our site have it enabled? This is probably a nit-pick to many people, but for a company offering their research, the difference is nontrivial. The people whom they are targeting their information (besides people just curious for trivia) likely know the difference.

    However, based on what I saw reported for my company, their data does not seem to accurately reflect what browsers/etc. people are actually using. Thus you could draw incorrect conclusions from their data.

    Maybe that's why the information is free. You get what you pay for.
    • I looked the company I work for, and it was listed as 100% Windows 2000 and 100% IE6.
      However, we have a mix of Windows 2000, Sun Workstations, Linux machines, and more than a few Macintoshes.

      Now you know what all those guys with the Windows machines are doing.

    • IE overcounted (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spud603 ( 832173 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:48PM (#11260534)
      It's likely that IE would get overcounted, at least by a little bit. with firefox and with safari, it's not uncommon to spoof the user agent to show up as IE (to get around sites that check your user agent and won't let you in if you're not on their browser list).

      I don't know how much this could account for, but at least a little.

  • More Stats (Score:5, Funny)

    by mg2 ( 823681 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:35PM (#11260450)
    Regarding White House internet usage, the number one browser used from the Oval Office itself is that of Xbox Live.

    When approached for comment, President Bush stated that he likes to relieve his stress by, "blowing the shit out of my constituency on Halo 2."

  • My company's employees use the web to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jeremythehunt ( 555593 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:41PM (#11260491)
    abuse Slashdot so that our IP gets banned. When we track down the little bastard that did this...

    • We got banned! (Score:5, Funny)

      by mikeb39 ( 670045 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @12:16AM (#11260964) Homepage
      While I was working with a network admin at a local highschool, the entire district got banned from Slashdot for "abuse" that appeared we were trying to dos them or somesuch. Of course we just assumed it was the district, but as it turned out, all the schools in the province are connected to a massive network that provides bandwidth for every school. So every school in the province got banned, that's thousands of IT workers and whoever the heck knows how many geeky kids who were suddenly greated with a big red screen. It took a few emails to slashdot to finally get them to unblock it, and the problem as it turned out was some kind of a router looping explosion thing. Sorry, boring story and I forgot the details. And the point. But I got this far, so *submit button*

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:41PM (#11260494)

    95% of dynamic websites crumble within the first 15 comments. 50% after subscriber 'preview'. 5% when Cmdr Taco tries to click on the link before posting the story. 3% when Cmdr Taco tries to click on the link before posting the story. 2% when Cmdr Taco tries to click on the link before posting the story. 0% for Timothy; he's too busy ranting about the latest threat to "our rights online" to check the links.

  • When (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AnonymousCowheart ( 646429 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:42PM (#11260498)
    When is slashdot going to post their server stats??

    • Re:When (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      But that would be, like, geek porn or something!


      Besides, all you have to do is find a site that publishes its own stats, and then get a story posted that has a link to it.

    • Here's a small sample (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @12:54AM (#11261099)
      I recently hosted a mirror of an image in one of my posts that got around 800 hits. This was what my stats were for that.

      Browser Version:

      Firefox - 39.8%
      MS IE - 19%
      Curl - 14.1% (probably high because it was an image)
      Unknown - 9.3%
      Mozilla - 4.9%
      Others - 4.4%
      Opera - 3.1%
      Safari - 2.8%
      Konqueror - 1.9%
      Netscape - 0.3%

      OS Version:

      Windows - 56.7%
      Linux - 25%
      Unknown - 13.9%
      Macintosh - 3.6%
      FreeBSD - 0.5%
      Unknown Unix System - 0.1%

  • 50 links (Score:5, Funny)

    by dourk ( 60585 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:45PM (#11260515) Homepage
    Just love that all 50 links in the submission are to the same /.ed server.

    "Well, that link didn't work. Maybe this one..."

  • Look, I'm not anti-Firefox but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:47PM (#11260523) Homepage
    Firefox is their second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer 6's whopping 98.76% share.

    The second most popular behind 98.76%. Spin that any faster and you'd warp space-time. :)
    • Ummmm....That's the stats for Microsoft. I'm suprised that Microsoft even allows there employees to install firefox.

      • Re:Look, I'm not anti-Firefox but... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Baggio ( 8432 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @12:14AM (#11260952)
        Hard to be a tester (depends on the product of course) if we don't consider other browsers...

        I work in Office as a tester, and during the last product cycle, when we were releasing Office 2003, I did some sanity passes to make sure that Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox failed gracefully in parts of Sharepoint Portal Server that are specifically coded for IE 5.5+. Except for some administration pages, SPS handled N/M/F for most of the content and scaled back appropriately. The result wasn't as feature rich on those alternate browsers, but every effort was made to make them usable for most people.

        Naturally IE is the prefered browser, and what most things are written for, but as a company, it is in our best interest to make as many products work on a widely diverse set of platforms. Real users don't run everything Microsoft (although they should ;) so of course we're going to use the competitions products for development and testing for completeness.

        However, when I'm done testing and need to be productive on other things, I use IE 6 and perform my searches through the MSN Toolbar/Deskbar suite. I used the Google Toolbar until the MSN suite was released; try and try as I might, I'm still not sold on Firefox.

  • IE in MS (Score:4, Informative)

    by dioscaido ( 541037 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @10:50PM (#11260549)
    Not too surprising, since our intranet apps often use tons IE only features. You can actually do some pretty nifty stuff in IE w/ XML/XSL, Javascript and DHTML. But I'll be damned if it doesn't break every standard in the book. :(

    Fascinating stats. Add me to the % that uses Mozilla. :}
    • Add me to the non-IE % too (Firefox 1.0)
    • You should be using Mozilla in your situation just like Ford should analyze Chevy, Honda, Dodge, etc. cars.

      My friend's job at GM is to take apart and measure, record and analyze cars from other manufactures. It is no secret because all other car makers do the same thing. You can not improve your product in the eyes of your customer unless you look at the competition.

    • mozilla/khtml (Score:3, Informative)

      by cyfer2000 ( 548592 )
      You can actually do some pretty nifty stuff in mozilla or khtml w/ XML/XSL, Javascript, DHTML and CSS.

  • VisitorVille = spyware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by complete loony ( 663508 ) <Jeremy@Lakeman.gmail@com> on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:00PM (#11260593)
    well, kindof.. So they track every user who visits a site running their web bug [visitorville.com] and they *could* sell that information to anyone.
    BTW I hope they're seeing lots of slashdot tornado's and riots [slashdot.org] at the moment... :)
    • Oh, they use a web bug to collect data? Would that explain the stats showing some companies like IBM as 100% IE, maybe? Hmmmmm....

      Soko
    • "So they track every user who visits a site running their web bug"

      So you're telling me google has this fucking bug in it? Doubt it.. how else would they get the Apache access.log with MS ips from google to anaylize?

  • Microsoft employees and Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by TekPolitik ( 147802 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:04PM (#11260606) Journal
    Microsoft employees use Google for their searches 66% of the time, but MSN Search only 20% of the time

    Nah. Microsoft employees use MSN search 99% of the time and Google 1% of the time. It's just that MSN search almost never finds anything useful so they don't click on the web sites found, hence nothing shows up in RefererLog files.

  • Statistics (Score:4, Funny)

    by tuxter ( 809927 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:10PM (#11260628) Journal
    And 78.35% of statistics are fabricated.....

  • You know its true (Score:5, Funny)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:10PM (#11260629) Journal
    That 20% MSN search at Microsoft accounts for all the times Bill Gates or some other senior hovers over someones shoulder...

  • Browser usage doesn't mean personal choice (Score:3, Informative)

    by Transcendent ( 204992 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:16PM (#11260649)
    At the company I work for (I'm not in the IT department of this one... shucks), we are forced to use IE because certian web applications we use for inter/intra department communication or data storage use asp or other activex controls.

    I asked specifically if I could get firefox installed (I don't have administration access on my desktop... ::sigh::), and one of the IT guys just said "we would, but our web apps only work with IE." Ah well...
  • Personally, I prefer emacs.

  • Mirrors Here (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kinetic ( 3472 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:24PM (#11260692) Homepage
    Looks like their server is clobbered. MirrorDot [mirrordot.com] has the mirrors.

  • Mirror... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bopo ( 105833 ) * <bopo@n e r p .net> on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:27PM (#11260707) Homepage
    Dear Slashdotter,

    We're sorry we missed you.

    In your infinite bounty, you have brought down our server.

    Please check back once the /. effect has subsided. Here's the URL to bookmark: http://intelligence.visitorville.com

    Thanks for your interest!

    Robert Savage, Mayor, VisitorVille
  • 1 of approx. 80^6 germans likes it that "Deutsche Telekom AG employees are the biggest users of Linux".
    • uh. sorry. 80*10^6 germans only.

  • As a former sun employee.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by velo_mike ( 666386 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:38PM (#11260764)
    The only search engine they're using these days is Dice [dice.com]...

  • Browser User-Agent forgery (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Indy Media Watch ( 823624 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2005 @11:57PM (#11260870) Homepage
    Isn't it possible the browser of choice is artificially skewed towards IE?

    I know a lot of users of other browsers spoof their user-agent to stop websites bitching about incompatible browsers.

    Mine is set to send IE6.0 WinXP even though I am probably using Lynx on an iPod.

    Equally, I imagine some Safari users are quite deliberately NOT spoofing anything to do a bit of evangelism.

  • Browser Loyalty (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @01:20AM (#11261210) Homepage Journal
    Nowadays, I'm a diehard Firefox user -- but only because they've finally taken the lead on Internet Explorer in security and reliability. For years, I used IE, giving Mozilla or Netscape a chance every six months or so, and always going away disgusted with its bugginess and slugishness.

    Back in 1998, I was working for the Java division of Sun, where we relied on the "Intranet" long before it was a word. Most documents, both internal, and external, were in HTML. Which makes a really good web browser really important. And yet we were stuck with the Solaris port of Netscape 4.7. Buggy, sluggish, screwed up my X-Windows palette, crashed once an hour -- and it didn't provide headers and footers for printouts! I was working as a tech writer, reading and producing a lot of documents, so this was a major crimp in my productivity. I finally broke the No Microsoft Rule and installed IE for Solaris on my workstation.

    That's all the brand loyalty you can expect from techies -- give them something that works, or they're gone.

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