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FTC bans antivirus giant Avast from selling its users' browsing data to advertisers
(techcrunch.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
between smartphones replacing desktop PCs and mac computers, I doubt that there's "billions" of windows users left in reality.
don't forget all the office drones, who are also the main target of scammers
I didn't, but I considering the world's workforce is around 3 1/2 billion people, and that in the developed world, the percentage of office jobs is around or below 50%, however the majority of the world's work force live in underdeveloped parts of the world, I would estimate the total number of worldwide office workspaces to be significantly below a billion. And - even the number Microsoft themselves claim, appears to be only 1.5 billion total per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems - with this particular quote in the article (emphasis by me):
240 million PCs were shipped last year, with about 10% being Apple. A negligible number run Linux. If we assume 5 years average life, that's still easily a billion active Windows devices.
That said, devices may not be the best metric. You mentioned users, which may use many devices. For instance, I use a Windows laptop at work, Windows desktop at home, Android on my phone.
I would use web server metrics, which are an approximate indicator of time spent on each OS.
I believe the yearly tally from some company aggregating website traffic came out a few months back and linux had climbed over 4% of desktop usage. Linux gamers have outnumbered mac users on steam for close to a year now.
As I said, I took issue with the plural in billionS :) that typically implies "more than two" when it's likely to be closer to 1.
poor you :)