Searching for consistencies
We ran across a list of Google search results from June 29,2004, and thought it might be interesting to compare them with searches on two days in November 2007:
| 29 June 2004 | 8 November 2007 | 13 November 2007 | |
| Linux | 108,000,000 | 234,000,000 | 36,300,000 |
| Free Softweare | 7,230,000 | 72,800,000 | 99,000,000 |
| GPL | 14,000,000 | 120,000,000 | 13,100,000 |
| GCC | 11,800,000 | 30,700,000 | 3,640,000 |
| Open Source | 9,130,000 | 412,000,000 | 74,000,000 |
| SuSE | 10,800,000 | 32,400,000 | 3,520,000 |
| Debian | 24,300,000 | 64,000,000 | 7,150,0000 |
| Ubuntu | - | 72,800,000 | 9,300,000 |
| Red Hat | 8,710,000 | 97,900,000 | 12,800,000 |
Worth noting here is that the 8 November searches were done in London, but at google.us, to avoid the google.uk site (though tested results were essentially the same when I tried both). The 13 November searches were done in the US. Boston, to be exact.
Still, the widely varying results makes one wonder why the largest deployer of Linux in the world (as well as the world's leading search engine) can't yield more consistent, if not useful, numbers.
- Doc Searls