There are new articles this week, citing StatCounter, stating that Linux rose to 10% market share in the US. Exciting if true, but I doubt it is. More bots pretend to be real users than ever now, and as with last time, that messes with the numbers. Web market share stats are no longer reliable.
Legacy Update@legacyupdate.net · 9mo agoJust a friendly reminder that, particularly when coming from search result summaries, AI only knows as much as it can glean from sources it deems to be authoritative. Often, those are news outlets that use clickbait, and put writers under pressure to push out articles without much critical thought.
![A conversation with DuckDuckGo’s AI chat feature. The conversation starts with the search query “windows 7 september 2025”. Assist (DDG’s search summary feature) says that “In September 2025, Windows 7 experienced a surprising resurgence in market share, increasing by tenfold, particularly in Asia, as users began to shift away from Windows 10, which was nearing its end of life. This trend indicates that many users are opting to continue using the older operating system despite its lack of official support since 2020.”
I continue the conversation by challenging it on the validity of the data. It searches and then says “The claim is almost certainly invalid - StatCounter reported a large September 2025 jump for Windows 7, but multiple technical analyses and follow-ups flag it as a reporting anomaly […]”.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3don7mh2mrixkaj6ey2rmbsn/bafkreid6lqsdsuil72vkafnewowaxxzicnuvpntulwjj2wma3gmpgqkeum)
