chiyo - 4:52 pm on May 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

Brett wrote: >>IT people - including webmasters - make up less than one quarter of one percent of the web audience. Probably less than a quarter million people involved front lines in IT in the states. Rumor has it, the toolbar is running on 10 million machines. That in turn means less than 2% of the toolbars are on IT peoples boxes. eg: we aren't statistically significant.<<

Well that logic works if the demographics of those who download and use the Google toolbar is the same as the web audience as a whole, no matter how large the download or user base. Google's toolbar may well be more representative of the web browsing population than say Alexa, but it's still a major assumption to make. eg.

The only safe thing to say about any conclusions that Google may make on data from toolbar users, is that it applies to ...well... toolbar users.

It cant be generalised to joe surfer, or other web-user groups, or anybody who uses google without a toolbar, until it can be proved that they are one the same.

Its just a guess, but I think you need some above-average interest in the web, not using a mac or non-IE browser, and be using a personal data station (e.g. not shared ones say at work and cybercafes, schools, etc) and be one who really likes details to download it, and more to the point, continue to use it.