In the tech circle, Windows dead has been predicted many times but it has never happened, mainly because of its enormous size. However, according to data released by the Google Analytics Team, the market share of Windows is going down.

The Google Analytics Team has compiled data and analyzed data from all the websites which has opted-in to share data anonymously in Google Analytics. While they have not released the exact number of websites that are participating, they said that it hundreds of thousands. So, the data size is large enough to be relevant.

The Google Analytics Team has compared data from November 1, 2010 - February 1, 2011 to that from November 1, 2009 - February 1, 2010. According to their data, 89.9% of the users accessed the internet on Windows machines between November 1, 2009 - February 1, 2010. The number has however dropped to 84.8% by November 1, 2010 - February 1, 2011. That is a drop of 5.1% in one year – quite a significant drop.

Interestingly, out of the 5.1% that Windows lost, another category classified by Google Analytics as “Others” has gained 4.3% to jump from 5% to 9.3%. If I were to take a guess, I would guess that it is mainly due to the mobile OS such as Android and iOS. The remaining 0.8% that Windows lost is taken up by Mac, which gained 0.7% to get from 4.5% to 5.2%, and Linux, which has gained 0.1% to get from 0.6% to 0.7%.

However, it can be debated if the actual number of Windows machine has decreased. Because of the rapid increase in popularity of iOS and Android, it it quite possible that there was no significant drop in the actual number of Windows machine – it could have even increased, in fact. If that were the case, it makes the increase in market share for Mac and Linux very impressive.

You might also be interested in taking a look at Google's Transparency Report.