Antone Gonsalves of TechWeb writes in "Search-Engine Rankings Unchanged In August":
Google Inc. remained the search-engine leader in August, accounting for close to 1 in 4 searches on the Web, a Web metrics firm said Monday.
Let's look at the numbers:
1. Google increased its share to 37.3%, up by 1.2% from a year ago.
2.Yahoo dropped to 29.7%, down 1%.
3. AOL dropped to 9.6%, also down 1%.
No mention of MSN, so I guess it's below 9.6%. This is fascinating, when you consider that Microsoft imposes MSN as the default search engine on all new computers and installations of Windows -- through its defaulted Internet Explorer Web browser.
Back to the writer's arithmetic: 37.3% is not 1 in 4; it's closer to 1 in 2.5 -- or, more accurately, 1 in 2.68. Did the writer make a math error, or was he trying to downplay Google's significance?
Wrong Factor
Meanwhile, whoever at Reuters edited Michael Kahn's report on Autodesk acquiring Alias, used the wrong conversion factor. This line appears in the UK version of the news item:
... it would pay $182 million (321 million pounds) in cash to acquire Alias...
At today's exchange rate of 1.7601, the US$183 million purchase is 104 million pounds, not nearly as impressive a number for the British audience.
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