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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Technology
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users can modify their useragent string, and sometimes they have to because some webdevs are morons.
some browsers actually default to using chrome instead of its own.
using a browser-reported useragent string to count marketshare itself is flawed from the start, using a very narrow and limited scope of web sites to measure it--even more so.
if i counted my own clients: home, soho and small business end users... it's about even between chrome and firefox on windows (chrome users doing so on their own, as we highly recommend firefox, and vivaldi over chrome for a chromium-based solution) with edge trailing far behind; and about 3 to 1 android (chrome) over safari on mobile with (so far, but soon to change) very few mobile firefox users.
Government websites are really bad about needing to fake the user agent string because of low bidder contracted work that often starts and ends with Internet Explorer/Edge and is rarely updated due to how government budgeting works.
I worked at a small MSP 2020-2021. Some of our customers needed access to government sites for reporting. The fact that some of these pages still had the "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" badge or language was sad and frightening. Luckily there's browser compatibility mode in Edge (which as you mentioned is probably just changing the user agent string), but still. My dad works in govt IT and even he's encountered internal sites that require ActiveX. He has to sometimes figure out workarounds.
I did have one medical client that used some web charting/reporting platform. And it required a specific, long outdated version of Firefox. We had to intentionally turn off updates in Firefox so they could access it. Anything newer than that version and the site wouldn't load. It was very strange.
The minority of users do this or even know about UA strings.
Sure, but Firefox isn't one of them
but those that do inflate google's stats.
Doesn't seem too likely that'd be more than a few percentage points. Which non-Chromium browsers even do this?
Using a Chrome user agent in FF can result in broken video / audio playback on various sites.
i had to fudge the useragent to chrome yesterday to get 1080p out of azn.