Revamped NetApplications data: Bad for IE and Mac OS, good for Chrome

Web metrics company NetApplications has released revamped data that's good news for Google and the Chrome browser, and bad news for Microsoft and Apple.

NetApplications has introduced a new weighting methodology that's based on the estimated size of each country's Internet population. This new methodology, which has been applied retrospectively to the old data, has meant that some companies have gained ground, while others have lost.

The biggest hit has been taken by Apple's Safari browser. Its share has gone from 8.4% in May (based on the old methodology) to only 4.1%. That's a major knock. The reason is simple - the data was too US-oriented, and normalizing that meant that Apple's place in the world was put into context. This drop has hit Apple's OS and Safari share hard.

Things are also bad for Microsoft. While IE6 has seen its share rebound dramatically (from around 17% to around 28%, so despite what anyone says, IE6 lives on, unfortunately), IE's overall share has slipped. Again, the US-bias in the data skewed the global importance of IE.

But the change in methodologies has been good for some. Take Google Chrome. Now that Safari's importance has slipped, Chrome is only 1.5% behind taking third place. Heck, even Opera is in with a chance of taking third place.

The shift in OS data is also interesting. While Windows is up there with a 93% usage share, with Mac at 4.9% and Linux at 1%, you begin to realize that Apple's ads make the company seem like a much bigger player than it really is globally.

It'll be interesting to see how the companies affected take this information and spin it. My guess is that it's a stark reminder of how different things are when you look at things globally. Funny how some of the biggest global names look smaller when looked at from a global standpoint.