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Putting aside my point was about decades, you are ignoring the increase in unknown
If you research that you find
In Statcounter’s data for 2026, the "Unknown" category has become a significant and controversial slice of the market share, sometimes reaching as high as 8% globally and over 16% on desktops.
Because Statcounter relies on User Agent (UA) sniffing (reading the ID string your browser sends to a website), "Unknown" is essentially a bucket for any traffic that fails this ID check. Here is the likely makeup of that category:
Privacy conscious Linux users are widely considered the largest "hidden" group. Many Linux distributions and privacy-focused browsers (like LibreWolf or hardened Firefox) deliberately "spoof" or strip their User Agent strings to prevent fingerprinting.
Why it's "Unknown": If a browser sends a generic or blank string to avoid being tracked, Statcounter cannot verify if it's Ubuntu, Fedora, or Arch, so it defaults to Unknown.
The "India Anomaly": In 2026, "Unknown" desktop share in India spiked to over 50%. Analysts believe this is a mix of localized Linux variants and massive use of privacy extensions that break standard analytics.
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