[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

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.

Thing is, we don't know how many unknown are Windows, MacOS, or Linux. So while it's increasing, it's an issue because we don't know how it effect the other stats.