Tag: statistics

It’s Official: Google Says More Searches Now On Mobile Than On Desktop

Search Engine Land reports:

Last year we heard informal statements from several Google employees that mobile search queries would probably overtake desktop queries some time this year. Google just confirmed this has now happened.

The company says that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.” The company declined to elaborate further on what the other countries were, how recently this change happened or what the relative volumes of PC and mobile search queries are now.

[…]

Google groups tablets with desktops. So this is just smartphones and does not include tablets.

There’s also an interesting misalignment of this report with some Comscore reports.

Almost a third at risk of poverty

Cyprus Mail reports:

ALMOST ONE third of Cyprus is at risk of poverty and social exclusion, according to figures released by the statistical service that show an increasing trend since 2008.

The latest numbers show that in 2013, the risk was 27.8 per cent compared to 23.3 per cent in 2008, both of which are way off the national target of 19.8 per cent.

One measurement new to me was the “material deprivation” items:

In 2013, 16.1 per cent of the population in 2013 could not afford to pay at least four out of nine ‘material deprivation’ items. These are the ability to pay rent or utility bills, to cover unexpected charges, to keep their home adequately heated, to eat meat, fish or a protein equivalent every second day, to take a week’s holiday away from home, or to buy a car, washing machine, colour TV and telephone.

Now that puts it a bit into a perspective … “at least four out of nine”.

WhatsApp passes 800,000,000 active users

whatsapp-numbers

TechCrunch is reporting on WhatsApp passing the 800,000,000 active users mark.  Almost exactly a year ago, it was at 500 million active users.  I don’t care much about WhatsApp’s business or service, but from the technical point of view this is quite significant.  That’s almost a million active users acquired every day for the last year.  That’d be a challenge for anyone to handle.  Thinking that this growth might have been not too linear gives me digital goose bumps.

I haven’t seen anything recent describing their infrastructure, but this article from last year provides a starting point for the imagination:  Erland + FreeBSD + 550 servers, with preference for larger box with loads of RAM and cores.  I’m sure that have grown quite a bit in a year too.

Cost Obsessions Around the World

obsession map

Cost Obsessions Around the World

Google’s autocomplete function provides suggestions derived from common Google searches by other users. Comparing autocomplete results for searches on different countries reveals how certain places are perceived by people around the World.

Make sure to scroll through the original article for continental breakdowns.

I’m thinking these stats are somewhat off due to language variations (not everybody searches in English).