[Infowarrior] - Mozilla/Firefox Stealth Data Project

[Richard Forno]

...not really sure I like this idea, even if it's on an opt-in  
basis........rf


Mozilla Stealth Data Project Could Be Just What The Internet Needs
Michael Arrington
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/13/mozilla-stealth-data-project-could-be-just-what-the-internet-needs/

One of the most frustrating tasks about my job is finding reliable  
traffic and other usage data about websites.

But today, Mozilla CEO John Lilly and VP Engineering Mike Schroepfer  
said they may fix that problem in the future, via the massive  
installed base of Firefox users.

The State of Analytics Today

There are three ways to measure web traffic.

The first is user-focused and based on software installed on user  
machines. Services like Alexa and Compete get users to install  
software on their computers and then track surfing habits to come up  
with best guesses on Internet-wide traffic. It works in theory, but  
getting enough users to get statistically relevant results has proven  
challenging. Alexa is famously flawed, and while Compete seems to be  
somewhat better, it only tracks U.S. users. Comscore is another user- 
focused metrics company that tends to work well for large sites, not  
well at all for newcomers (and it is very expensive to access their  
database).

A second way to determine site useage is to track traffic directly  
from websites. Quantcast combines user surveys with direct tracking on  
websites (when they can get it) to estimate traffic. Comscore also  
does this with certain sites.

The third way is to track surfing behaviors via records from ISPs.  
Hitwise uses this method to provide web analytics to clients.

None of these services are particularly accurate (as can be seen by  
the fact that they almost always disagree with eachother). The problem  
is simply gathering enough data from enough users to be able to draw a  
picture-perfect image of actual Internet usage. That’s why I’ve called  
for Google to offer users to make their Google Analytics data publicly  
available. Would many people do it? Just the ones that want us to  
trust the user numbers and page views they claim.

How Firefox Could Fix The Problem

The product is still very early, say Lilly and Schroepfer. In fact, it  
doesn’t have a project name within Mozilla - they simply refer to it  
as “Data.” But the idea is fairly straightforward. Ask Firefox’s 170  
million (and growing) user base if they would like to opt in to  
anonymous data collection on their surfing habits. Then take that  
anonymized data and create very statistically relevant analytics  
reports for all websites.

Only a small percentage of those 170 million users would have to agree  
to be tracked (Lilly said 1% is more than enough) to get useful data.  
There are Firefox users in every country, and the distribution is  
fairly attractive for worldwide analytics tracking. Only 29% of  
Firefox users are in the U.S. 13% are in Germany, 6% in France, 4% in  
the UK, and so on. Firefox is now available in 50 different languages.

Of course, this would track only Firefox users, not IE, Safari, Opera  
and other browsers. And Firefox users as a group may have different  
surfing habits than the Internet as a whole. But as Firefox usage  
grows more mainstream, this will become less and less of a problem.  
Mozilla estimates that they now have 18% market share across all  
browsers.

If and when this launches, it would likely be the most reliable public  
traffic and usage data available. Let’s hope they do launch it, and  
soon. I’ll be the first to sign up.