Friday 21 May 2010

Data made meaningful and powerful by cooperation

I read about Google Chrome having 70 million users (not downloads, but users) on the Google Operating System blog. An impressive statistic.
The chart showed the increase over time:
Aside from the starting at 30 millions and thus not being able to see the full axis and thus the scale of it, I thought it showed the statistic well.
However, looking through the comments, I came across this comment from Scrvpvlvs: "Your fine article prompted me to compare the two browsers’ growth rates", dated the same day, under his blog post: "Chrome Heats Up Faster Than Firefox".
And in three charts he makes the data totally meaningful. The original poster quoted some figures from another website and stated that Firefox had five times more users than Chrome - implying that we should see the 70 million in that context.
Scrvpvlvs' charts show that these are indeed impressive figures because it shows the growth of Chrome. first by market share over time:



























Then by share growth:


























and then projecting one year into the future:


























showing Chrome overtaking Firefox.
Thanks Scrvpvlvs for the analysis. It struck me also that it showed the power of collaboration, enriching the analysis of the original statistic.