A plea to the techs at Google

keeping track of PR is costing me 2 gigabytes

[littleman]

Hey guys, great tool bar! I love it's convenient features and I especially love the fact that it allows me a small peak into your PageRank algorithm. As you all know PR is a topic of considerable interest to us webmasters.

Yet, the toolbar is forcing me to keep 2 Gigs of bloated and buggy software on my hard drive that would otherwise be purged of Microsoft products.

Please give us a *nix users an alternative, it will feel good.

Here are some reasons why you should:
#1 MS is your competition
#2 IE is a terrible browser
#3 Windows is a terrible OS
#4 Your amazing search engine is based on open source software
#5 It will cause a huge buzz on all the geek sites
#6 good for the environment (people buy less HDs)
#7 good for development, if you had an open source interface it would become a hell of a tool in a short time
#8 Keep millions of not-so-bright surfers from getting ugly trojans/viruses
#9 The non-MS using segment of the web is a growing % of the landscape, and is going to continue to grow
#10 I'll buy the developers pizza and beer -- good beer, not the cheap stuff

So how about it?

[Mike_Mackin]

#10 should do the trick :)

[Chris_R]

I don't think #9 is true - at least according to Google's statistics.

I agree with most of your points, but I notice a lot of developers seem to be under this impression. I think it is wishful thinking. As time goes by - more and more people are using microsoft browsers.

This is google's statitistics for non MS OSes:

June 2001: 9%
Aug 2001: 9 - 10%
Nov 2001: 9%
Jan 2002: 9%
Mar 2002: 10%
Apr 2002: 9%
May 2002: 10%
June 2002: 9%
July 2002: 9%
Aug 2002: 7%
Sept 2002: 8%

[littleman]

Not to stray off topic to much, but...
That is a very small variation, and what is missing from that is OS statistics. Many Mac users are using MSIE, and a good number of Linux users set their UA to something that is more compatible with the misguided browser sniffing scripts running on so many websites.

But Google, #10!

[Chris_R]

Not to get off topic :), but that is the OS stats. The browser stats are worse, but they don't usually have numbers - just a graph.

You have a point about users spoofing other stuff, but I don't think that it would be enough to change the statistics over time.

I hope they come out with a toolbar for other OSes as well - I just don't buy #9. Maybe with the apple/switch campaign we may see some changes, but right now - I don't see it.

Google does seem to be a big fan of the unix/open source community and I would think that a release as you suggest would help further cement their user base in that population.

I'd be willing to donate $250 to the beer/food fund if you can get them to do it. Although I kinda of doubt they are allowed to drink beer at the Googleplex - plenty of Mountain Dew should do the trick.