Google Docs has been the subject of some not-great press over the past week or so; a ClickStream study, in particular, suggested that the productivity offering has been ignored by a lot of people. But Matt Cutts has stepped forward with some new statistics, and it seems that the market share of Google Docs may not be quite so slim, after all.
First, the salient points of ClickStream’s study. The company found that one percent of people use Google Docs, and as a representative noted in the comments section of another murdok story, “[O]f all participants who used Google Docs or Google Spreadsheets, 68% also used Word at least once, indicating that Google Docs has yet to be considered a stand-alone product by most of its users. By contrast, only 26% of OpenOffice users also used Word during the 6-month study.”
New Google Docs Market Share Estimate
(Credit: Matt Cutts)
Cutts wasn’t able to turn these conclusions on their head; he also found that OpenOffice has a lead, and that Google Docs has a small market share. A look at data provided by Wakoopa suggests that the market share of Google’s product is closer to five percent than one, though.
Cutts writes, “Wakoopa gives data on at least 10x as many users as ClickStream, but you have to bear in mind that Wakoopa’s users skew toward the tech-savvy. If you have friends that sign up for cash/prizes in online studies you might lean toward the ClickStream numbers. If you run with a more Web 2.0 crowd or don’t know anyone that runs WordPerfect, you might believe the Wakoopa data.”
So Cutts’s new numbers could be more applicable to our search and eBusiness industry, anyway.
