Some of you may know that I used to work in tech support. I actually really liked the work but had numerous issues with management.
Before I had a face to face interview I had a phone interview. I was asked questions like, “what web browser do you use?” and “what is a firewall?”. I thought it was odd but must have been their first level screening process.
After watching this video, I think that manager may have actually been onto something with the questions that she asked. Only 8% of those asked “what is a browser” answered correctly.
My friend Rick Castellini from Help Me Rick raised two good points when I showed this video to him.
- While young people have grown up with the Internet and technology, they don’t seem to be any more tech savvy than us older folks.
- Google has HUGE name recognition. To many of these people, google is the Internet.
What do you think? Do you think the responses indicate what most people think about browsers, the Internet and search engines? I was surprised but sometimes I find that I live in a sort of tech bubble and assume that what I know is common knowledge.
On a somewhat related note 50% of country music fans polled do not have Internet access at home and don’t want it. Make of that what you will.
photo credit: Jerrold
Well, people learn how to use stuff rather than what this stuff exactly is. I mean the point is for them to be able to find what the want/need. If that involves the clicking of a weirdly looking fox icon, then putting the term on a box beyond a “Google” banner, then so be it. They are not interested to learn more than that and the don’t need to. We all use a car but we don’t really know how it works. We just turn the key and we are on our way…
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Hi Statros – That’s a good point. But if someone asks you what kind of car you drive you aren’t going to answer dashboard or steering wheel.
And I know I’m not normal but I don’t drive and I know quite a bit about how cars work – I’m frequently able to pinpoint the cause of the problem ;-)
Ok, I’ve actually been thinking about this (probably more than I should).
The video seems to be sponsored by Google. I’d like to know if the person asking the question started off by introducing himself as being from Google. At that point if he then asked the people: “What browser do you use?”, they may be saying to themselves: Ok – he’s from Google – I use Google – he’s asking me about searching.
I think your and Rick’s original points are still very valid and there is still a fundamental lack of understanding of the basic terminology but I wonder if the fact that this is a Google video influenced people’s answers.
I also wonder if these were the only people they interviewed or if they edited out any correct responses.
And I think our manager only wanted to make sure we knew what a browser was because she didn’t.
I’m not touching the country music one. Wouldn’t want to start a flame war in your comments section. ;-)
Hi Jim – You are becoming more cynical ;-) Must be due to my influence.
I’m sure the video was edited to include the funniest people or at least the people who said they could be used in the video.
I don’t know about people saying google because they were being interviewed by google …if you were interviewed by Volkswagon would you say you drove a Volkswagon if you really drove a Volvo.
And – oh snap at tech support ;-)
I think 8% is a huge exaggeration, but I also think that those of us who are more active on creating things on the internet (even as marginally as I am) do tend to live in bubbles and forget that not everyone has the same exposure to or need for information that we do.
I know a ton of people who insist they never read blogs, because they are picturing MySpace journals or another sort of personal blog. Or have insisted that my site is installing viruses on their computer, when they set their anti-virus to the very highest setting and it’s letting them know every time it blocks a cookie (and they also wonder why they don’t stay logged in)
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Hi Tracy – We are in a bubble. To us Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse are really important people – but do most people know who they are?
I’m surprised you think 8% is high … maybe I surround myself with too many tech types in real life too.
Oh – I have to do a virus scan every time I visit your site ;-)
Doh, I mean I think more than 8% would know what a browser is!
So – you mean I am not real world famous just because I got linked in Gizmodo? That’s harsh.
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Hi Kim. Seems the terminology is being taken very loosely. Most of these people are jumping from what a browser is to what it allows them to do. I don’t know what to make of the country music poll… I couldn’t imagine not having Internet access at home. I do have one friend who doesn’t and refuses to get it.
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Hi Davina – It seems that people don’t really know the difference between a web browser and a search engine. They click the icon on the desktop which takes them to a site that is probably preloaded. I bet whatever that site is is what they think the browser is.
It was 50% of the people polled so it’s hard to say if it’s reliable. But I can’t imagine not wanting internet access.
LOL – Kim, I can’t get this video to work because my daughter has done something to switch off the sound but she can’t remember what. When I go into settings,
I’m glad these companies do screen people though. In the late nineties, I spoke to two different people who had technical support jobs. They were both convinced that I shouldn’t have aol – it wasn’t the real Internet. When I asked what they thought it was that I was accessing, they said AOL stuff.
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Hi Cath – Go to Start > Control Panel > Sound and Audio Device Properties and check the settings there. The volume could be turned all the way down or Mute could be selected. This is Windows.
The screening was a good idea but it was odd at first. I think it was odd because of the person doing the screening. I did have co-workers though who couldn’t explain RSS – “It’s not instant information like a blog” I actually overheard that :-)
Generally tech support reps are not paid well and are treated like crap by management and by others in the company. You aren’t going to get quality reps in that scenario – at least when the economy is good.
Ok, I really like this article. The other day I tweeted how even though someone might know a lot about good design, we often times have difficulty building our own websites because we are just too close to it.
The tech bubble you mention is a perfect example. We often times assume too much when working on our own projects. It all makes sense to us, but we aren’t trying to sell to ourselves now, are we.
Hi John – I run into this a lot. I’ll write an article that explains something
complicated and mention using ftp. It hasn’t occurred to me that the reader might not know how to use ftp. I’ve also found that some of the more complicated articles I write get very few comments – almost as if I’ve put off my readers.
I do think that people should know what a web browser is or the name of the one that they use. It doesn’t mean they have to know how it works.
I’m with you on the more complicated or technical articles. Same here.
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I think people use technology, but they don’t necessarily understand it. Kind of like driving a car without knowing the mechanics.
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Hi Vered – True. But we knowing the name of a browser is similar to knowing the name of the car we drive.
This all makes sense to me. I interact with people online in a couple of different environments and the level of understanding of anything internet related is very different between the two.
I do have one gripe related to people who don’t have computers at home. A lady that I’ve known for years at work refuses to have a computer at home because of the “bad” influence it might have on her kids. Yet she broadcasts e-mail messages with huge photo files and forwards all kinds of junk e-mail as well as doing tons of on-line shopping — all from the privacy of her computer at work! The only reason I know this is that a couple of years before I retired she got to know my wife in a quilters organization and my wife ended up on her e-mail contact list.
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Hi Mike – Hmm … the bad influence. While she is sending out junk mail and shopping while she is at work. Unbelievable.
I think right now people have been growing with the tech. So it has become something so normal.. Like the train. Everyone use it and no one wonder anymore how it works and which type of technology it is using.
A friend of mine often tell me… Nowadays there are no more of those DEDICATED young hackers among so called hackers like it was in the199*
Simple example. Even to make a website, there are CMS like Joomla etc that even a kid can create his own simple site without knowing any html or php lol.
I find it no surprise about the browser because once I asked my mom who use a pc everyday at her office, what browser she use and she replied she dnt know. She said she never took the time to see lol. And sadly she was using the horrible IE :P
I gave her a copy of firefox to install. :)
Hi Kurt – That’s a interesting point. Browsers have become such a “normal” thing to use that people don’t even think about what it is.
Did your Mom like Firefox better? Or did she not care as long as it did
the job?
I think on the word wide web there is a snowball effect for almost everything, if some thing managed to get popular it gets more and more popular until and unless people find something really bad in it or find something very compelling to switch to. It is the same for windows os, the same for IE and the same for google, it is just like rich people getting richer and poor people getting more poor.
Maybe it is because old habits die hard and maybe because there are so many things on the internet more than one can handle so once you have settled there should be a very strong reason to change your mind.
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Hi – It seems to be true that the bigger and more powerful a company becomes the more we start to dislike it.
Yes, you are right, we do not like giant companies especially when it starts to take control our way of doing things , when it spread like a virus and in one way or another you obliged to use them but have no better alternatives to turn to when you find problems in it.
General Electronics is a giant company but there are less people dislike it compare to Google or Microsoft.
This is partly because of human nature partly because like a normal person, a company may became less attentive, more arrogant and manipulating when it became strong.
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People have a tendency to assume that everyone else knows what they are familiar with. That’s just human nature I guess, finance geeks despise you if you don’t know what an Option is and IT folks look down upon you if you don’t know what a browser is.
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Hi Manshu – Great example! I don’t know what an option is but I don’t use one everyday either :-)
Thanks Kim – it worked. The speakers had been muted.
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Hi Cath – Awesome! Told you I worked in tech support ;-)
Thanks for sharing the post.
I immediately thought of a hypothetical situation where I could be asked about mechanical or car related topics and go completely dumbstruck. ^^ The situation is normal, since they might have other things they’re more concern of or know better about. My friends thought I’m a go-to person if they have any PC/internet related problems, fact is I’m just a basic user, who only spent a lot more time on the internet than they do.
However, it still creates the awareness that many are still not 100% understand what’s going on in the world of internet.
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Hi Ching – So I guess that people see a browser as a mechanical part of
their computer similar to how an alternator is a mechanical part of a car. Looking at it that way I am starting to see the analogy.
Thanks for visiting.
Confession time: for the longest time, back in the late 1990s I thought a driver was an actual piece of equipment you had to buy and install into your computer, like a graphics card, to make programs work.
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Hi Tracy – That actually makes sense. I already told you that I though you had to have an iPod to listen to a podcast.
Do you remember scsi cards – used for things like scanners before USB became ubiquitous? Pronounced – scuzzy – I was very confused by that one.
In fact, does it really matter if they don’t know the meaning of browser… they just want to do their minimum stuff like sending mails, or finding something and they use browser for that… they may be even thinking that browser is google.com :)
Sometimes I envy such people – ignorance is bliss for sure. With the internet technologies spreading at an alarming pace, social networking is replacing direct human interactions but these people still enjoy their good life :) where as we are in our relentless mode to keep ourselves updated with information technology that has very small lifespan.
I really envy my previous generation :)
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Hi Ajith – You must be younger than me. When I was in high school and college all research was done via card catalog, making tons of notes and copies and writing papers with a typewriter. You were really lucky if you had a typewriter with a backspace correction feature. It was a pain in the neck.
I think my direct contact with real people has lessened but techology has allowed me to get to know and interact with people like you. It would have been very unlikely to encounter each other.
But it is very hard to keep up with technology. I was employed as a web developer between 1998-2002 and then left when my daughter was born. I couldn’t go right back into the field after being home for
3 years because I hadn’t kept up and things had changed so much.
It is surprising to know this.
Since i am in IT, i don’t have idea that there are lot of ppl out there who don’t know what is browser?
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Hi Nihar – I think we start to assume that everyone knows what we do.
Kim,
OMG, NOW I understand. My younger brother (God bless him – he sure needs it) gives me fits because he’ll call me with a computer problem and he keeps insisting that Yahoo is his browser!
To wit:
“Dave, what browser are you using?”
“Yahoo, like I told you!”
“Dave, Yahoo is not a browser, it’s a page on the internet. When you go to a web site on your computer, how do you get there?”
“Google.”
AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH! If I had hair to pull out, I would!!!
As a side note, he got so frustrated with a problem that I’m sure was easily fixable that he threw his computer ion the dumpster. Yup. All of it. Speakers, the (still in the unopened box) printer, everything.
Oy.
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Snort.
Yeah helping people on the forums, I might have had to ask “Do you click a orange and blue thingy or an e to use the internet” (gave up asking about a fox b/c well, I wouldn’t have known it was a fox either).
Turns out almost all of those people were using AOL browser. I never would have guessed that was an option!
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Hi Tracy – I don’t think I’ve ever used the AOL browser – I would have no idea how to even get started helping someone with that.
Hi George – lol – Oh man – the image of him throwing the entire thing in a dumpster is just too much.
Yahoo!
I am not really suppressed. My mother just got online for the first time a few months ago. As someone who has been a nurse for the past 39 years (started when she was 19) she never had to use a computer aside from hospital equipment. Even if she had to change jobs, she doesn’t need a resume – hospitals and registries call HER all the time. I doubt she knows what a “browser” is anymore than I know what a firewall is.
I’m on the tail end of the typewriter, card catalog, 24 volume encyclopedia, generation too.
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Hi Carla – Since your Mom just got online she might find that she really
enjoys it and will learn what a browser is.
Oh – I don’t miss those days of research and writing papers – I mean
at the time we didn’t know any different but it is so much easier now.
@Kim – Yes! She really enjoys shopping online – especially when she can buy certain items that’s cheaper than buying them the old fashioned way!
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Came over to see what’s happening at KW.com and of course always find cool stuff. I’m still laughing over this video you had on Stumble and saw you turned it into a post. Nice work as always…and thanks for giving me a mention too!
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Hi Rick – It’s what I call a lazy post :-) But I find that some of my lazy posts
become popular ones.
The title was striking. I guess at some point of time, some one is going to come to this page over the search query “What is a browser”. For them:
Browser is an HTML interpreter. In the modern scenario is more like a HTML + PHP + JavaScript interpreter.
When I was asked this question some years ago, I didn’t know the answer myself. I think I said that a Browser is something that helps me Google :)
I still don’t think am right ;)
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Hi Arun – Hmm … I don’t think the technical definition is going to help many people out. Maybe – a piece of software that allows you to view online content ..?
Ya, that will do, but I didn’t even say that definition when I was asked, that wasn’t not too hard. :)
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