Linux Wins the Latest Google Count

by Doc Searls

Yesterday I was doing some research on Google and thought I'd compare the number of results for different words and phrases. Here are a few of the surprising results:

  • Linux, 47,100,000

  • Windows, 43,800,000

  • UNIX, 12,200,000

  • Open Source, 2,740,000

  • Free software, 1,760,000

That's how far I got before the kid came home from school. But when I picked the job back up this morning, the results had changed:

  • Linux, 51,700,000

  • Windows, 46,700,000

  • UNIX, 13,000,000

  • Open Source, 2,810,000

  • Free software, 1,780,000

That piqued my curiosity, so I began searching for a whole pile of words. The results might not be meaningful, but they're still interesting:

  • US, 244,000,000

  • site, 200,000,000

  • UK, 75,300,000

  • sex, 82,600,000

  • love, 49,800,000

  • Canada, 35,100,000

  • Microsoft, 29,200,000

  • Japan, 26,800,000

  • HP (including Hewlett Packard), 25,560,000

  • death, 24,800,000

  • fun, 24,200,000

  • Australia, 22,300,000

  • China, 21,900,000

  • Germany, 18,500,000

  • England, 16,400,000

  • IBM, 16,300,000

  • Russia, 10,800,000

  • GNU, 9,040,000

  • Debian, 9,620,000

  • Apple, 8,940,000

  • fear, 8,800,000

  • drugs, 8,170,000

  • coffee, 7,830,000

  • commands, 7,370,000

  • Finland, 6,920,000

  • Solaris, 6,540,000

  • Compaq, 5,460,000

  • chicken, 5,100,000

  • smoke, 4,840,000

  • GNOME, 4,810,000

  • United States, 4,610,000

  • KDE, 4,540,000

  • OS X, 4,060,000

  • BSD, 3,190,000

  • SourceForge, 3,800,000

  • SuSE, 3,660,000

  • beef, 3,000,000

  • Mandrake, 2,840,000

  • foo, 2,180,000

  • girlfriend, 2,150,000

  • Red Hat, 2,140,000

  • Slashdot, 2,080,000

  • VA Software (including VA Linux), 2,043,000

  • Bill Clinton, 1,670,000

  • penguin, 1,510,000

  • boyfriend, 1,450,000

  • George W. Bush, 1,260,000

  • MacOS, 1,150,000

  • Slackware, 1,050,000

  • rock & (also and) roll, 894,000

  • Caldera, 787,000

  • Al Gore, 644,000

  • Linus Torvalds, 638,000

  • VA Linux, 553,000

  • melon, 525,000

  • Albert Einstein, 510,000

  • LinuxPPC, 294,000

  • Turbolinux, 250,000

Okay, that's enough. I have real work to do.

Speaking of which, I'm always looking for numbers to stick in the next LJ Index and elsewhere in the UpFront section of Linux Journal. If you have any you want to send along or point us to, please do.

Doc Searls is senior editor of Linux Journal.

email: doc@ssc.com

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