∑/Divergence

You do it. Your mom does it. Nearly every American does it: We google, about 7 billion times a month. And each time, its like a trip into Marissa Mayers mind. That sunny logo, blessedly spare interface and perfect list of links you get in response to a query are all pure Mayer. As vice president, search and user experience (and a 10-year veteran of Google), shes helped make the company the worlds number-one search engine, with revenues of nearly $22 billion last year. "Ive always liked simplicity," says Mayer, 34. "Its hard to tell where my aesthetic ends and Googles begins." Almost nothing gets out the door without her approval, including innovations like Gmail and Google Earth. "Its pretty hard to overstate her impact," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "She built the team that designs the products we all use." With a wardrobe thats strong on Oscar de la Renta and Armani, Mayer cuts a striking figure on the company campus. "When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night," Mayer jokes. "I do code all night! I am the stereotype, but I also break the stereotype." Among her goals: to bring more women into technology and teach them to take chances. "Get in a bit over your head," she says. "Thats how you grow and learn and stretch yourself."

Windows 7 arrived two weeks ago and so far it's selling quite well. With Mac OS X 10.6 becoming available less than three months ago, and Ubuntu 9.10 arriving last week, we feel it's a good time to start watching the market share for operating systems, in addition to our monthly posts on browser market share. At this point in time, Windows continues to dominate with more than 90 percent of the market, Mac OS is above the five percent mark, and Linux is just under one percent. In October, Windows was the only operating system not to show positive growth.

Between October and September, Windows dropped 0.25 percentage points (from 92.77 percent to 92.52 percent), Mac OS climbed up a sizeable 0.15 percentage points (from 5.12 percent to 5.27 percent), and Linux edged forward 0.01 percentage points (from 0.95 percent to 0.96 percent). Windows' drop is worth noting given that it occurred in the month that Windows 7 was released, but November may show something different given that it will be a full month of sales of the operating system. Still, Windows 7 did quite well; it managed to pass Linux, Snow Leopard, and even both of their shares combined (2.13 percent versus Windows 7's 2.15 percent):

You can see the market share pie for October 2009, according to Net Applications, at the top of this post. The graph just above shows how things at Ars are different, but not as significantly as when it comes to the browser market: our Mac OS share is five times greater than in the rest of the world, almost six if you count the mobile space as well. Linux also commands six times more of the market. Despite this, more than half of our users are on Windows. The release of Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and Karmic Koala should keep things very interesting well into next year.