63% use Internet Explorer? You guys don’t happen to have fragmentation statistics as a matter of interest, do you?

This is another survey with a report that makes the water murky rather than clearer.

“A full 95% of respondents said they used the Internet mainly for e-mail, while 84% used it for Web browsing and 78% made use of social networks.”

How many respondents are using web-based email services and which ones? My guess is the bulk would have a Gmail account. Browsing the web would involve search and my guess is that Google would be the preferred search engine.

Now, incredible as the figure of 40% who use Chrome as their preferred browser may sound, out of the 78% who make use of social networks… there’s no figures or a mention of Google+.

The problem that one finds, as always with such surveys, is that the questions asked were probably inappropriate or that the funding for the survey was from a particular sponsor with an agenda. For the period that the survey was conducted and for the mere fact that Chrome would be 2nd to IE, there should be more of a presence and mention of Google services when it comes to email, browsing and social networks.

For this survey to be of any value, it needs to be supported by a list of the questions asked and the fragmentation stats.

and Mozilla Firefox?

I’ve noticed more and more that when you visit Google services with a non-Chrome browser, they’re popping up Chrome download prompts. And I know a LOT of clueless users that just blindly install it, because they don’t know any better. Not that I have anything against Chrome, but I think it’s one of the major reasons behind its success – they’re proactively pushing it out average users, whereas you still have to know of its existence and go out of your way to install Firefox.

2 263 Hardly represents South Africa. Where are these people from? Where do they work? What income bracket do they fall in? Is it possible that they use the internet at home for social media, because companies block sites like Facebook and Twitter during core business hours? Very surprising that none of the respondents use internet on their cell phones, this contradicts all other research done in the last few years.

“The report is meant to assist advertisers to understand South African online consumers better.” What a joke! This so called report is selling lies to advertisers.

Lunga true for according to senses 2012 only 10% of households have fixed line internet

My experience with a local Isp’s website indicates the following: IE 47%, Chrome: 25%, FF 18%, Safari 7%. I manage a number of websites and these stats more or less stack. It is noticeable that websites with less technical audiences the stats are biased towards IE.

I still can’t get over the fact that IE is the predominant browser in S.A. Damn joke survey.

>Greg… I also use 3 browsers on a daily bases and just on speed alone, there’s no match for Chrome.

6-12 months ago this would have been a true statement, but the other guys have caught up and in many instances overtaken Chrome.

>>I can tell you that you’d best be on Chrome for an ideal YouTube and Google+ Hangouts experience

I have no doubt Google’s services work best with its browser. It would be a bit of a shock if they didn’t. I don’t use Google+ at all though – I’m a long-time Google fan, but am moving away from them for my services as much as I can, their recent policies (forced products like G+, locking rival companies out and removing so many awesome free services) because I just don’t feel comfortable they’re the “good guy” any more.

>>When you talk “fanboyism” then you’re making reference to clueless Apple fanatics…

Nope. Fanboyism was around long before Apple zealots entered the fray, and will be around long after Apple is gone. Fanboyism means being loyal to a brand and ignoring the progress of others, so you don’t notice when they catch up and overtake. Intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs ATI/AMD, Vinyl vs Digital, Valve amps vs digital amps to name a few recent ones.

Noted… At this point in time I would say you’re doing yourself a disservice moving away from Google offerings. As I’ve mentioned, for the foreseeable future, cyberspace will remain in the Google universe domain and while your sentiments may be justified from the past records of the companies you’ve mentioned, IMO Google, are still the good guys and I believe it will be so for many decades to come.

>At this point in time I would say you’re doing yourself a disservice moving away from Google offerings.

It all depends what you use, I guess – Google’s hosted email domains aren’t an option anymore, with them removing the free version – I’ve moved all mine across to MS Live domains – it has a better, unified admin interface, and for everything else works just as well. Google playing silly, pointless politics and removing activesync support left a bad taste in my mouth, too. I’m really enjoying the online outlook client. I think I might prefer it to the Gmail client, this is coming form a gmail fan from day 1. It’s so easy to migrate to another email provider, there’s almost zero lock-in there.

I’m also moving all my docs away from Google docs/drive – I think Google missed the boat bigtime on this, they seem to be putting in the minimum amount of effort to keep drive/docs going, compared to Microsoft who have overhauled Skydrive/online office and are aggressively improving it, and I feel have comfortably overtaken Google here.

G+? Don’t have any friends on it, but do occasionally click through to people hosting their blogs there. So I am exposed to it, but never feel a need to actually use it, even though I’m nagged daily by Google to use it. Pretty soon you won’t be able to use any Google service without a G+ account, I bet. Which is a pity. It makes their user number stats meaningless.

Search? I use both Google and Bing – very little difference between them, really. They both do a good job. When you don’t find what you’re looking for on one, doing the same search on the other usually yields the results you want.

I don’t get how the internet is a “Google universe” – I can’t think of anything they do demonstrably better than anyone else, except put ads in front of their users, which is where they get pretty much all their money from. Sure, if you use G+/search/docs/mail to get your work done, I can understand how one would think that, but I try not to invest too much allegiance in any company or their services, so when something better comes along I can jump on to it.

I would also agree that the percentages are a closer reflection of what would be true for ZA.

Citrix and omNovia offer great tools but not Skype. However both Citrix and omNovia have a cost element to consider, whereas with G+ Hangouts you can have a collaborative meeting using Google drive plus broadcast it through G+ Hangouts On Air in a similar manner as you would with webinars you can have using the leading tools, at present, like Citrix (Gotomeeting) and omNovia which I’ve found to be better than Citrix. As I’ve said before, I’m well aware of other technologies and competitors and Google is light years ahead.