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Google Fonts Analytics

fonts.google.com

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Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#61

Post by sp332 »

thrower123 wrote: post #14
paulmendoza wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google embedded the top fonts in the browser this wouldn’t be an issue. I don’t understand why the font selection in browsers is so limited.

So many things about the web would be better if browsers shipped basic functionality. I cringe when I think about how many petabytes of jQuery has been sent over the wire over the years.

Decentraleyes is a browser extension that locally stores the most popular CDN-hosted JS libraries, including Angular, Backbone, and jQuery. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#63

Post by themacguffinman »

aloer wrote: post #56

The operating system stats are interesting. Looks like Macs have roughly a 17% share of the windows + mac total requests. The overall market share per wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu... ) is something like 7% for Apple. Fonts are probably used by most "normal" computer users in some way so I wonder where that difference comes from - windows breaks faster and must be replaced m…

I think it's almost certainly due to average browsing habit differences between Mac and Windows users. The Mac userbase is likely wealthier on average and more likely to be in a design/product/publishing profession, which influences the type of website they would frequent.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#64

Post by raphlinus »

tiffanyh wrote: post #57
raphlinus wrote: post #30

I was part of the team that founded this, about 10 years ago if memory serves. I'm still loosely involved, though no longer at Google. Inconsolata was one of the 20 fonts for the original launch, and we're now in the process of launching it as a variable font, with both width and weight axes. I'm also getting funding from them for Rust-based font tools. Feel free to AMA, though no guarantees I'll have good answers.

Re: variable fonts. What’s the rule of thumb on file size ... is 1 variable font smaller than 1 normal font? Or is it more like 1 variable font is smaller than 3 normal fonts combined (eg bold, italic, regular).

A coarse rule of thumb is that each axis doubles the font size. So one that has just a weight axis is twice a normal font. One with a weight and width axis is four times. So if you actually use multiple instances from the design space, it's a win.

This is only a rough guide, don't take it as gospel. I'm also researching ideas (radial basis function interpolation) to make it more sparse for larger numbers of dimensions.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#65

Post by LukeBMM »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #42
keriati1 wrote: post #36

How much data traffic could google save if it would just bundle all fonts with chrome?

how much space would packing all those fonts take up?

With some extra metadata, about 428MB.

https://github.com/google/fonts

Since the browser hands font rendering off to the operating system, however, the most pertinent browser-specific adjustment would be updating the (configurable) defaults (Serif, Sans-serif, etc...) for each supported platform - Georgia instead of Times for a default, for example.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#66

Post by anamexis »

sp332 wrote: post #51
gioele wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> font file across websites with an extremely long TTL. Caches are no longer shared across domains because doing so leads to privacy leaks: https://www.jefftk.com/p/shared-cache-is-going-away

-

The parent comment's point is that this cache is partitioned by frame origin (which the link details).

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#67

Post by juandazapata »

rememberlenny wrote: post #54
raphlinus wrote: post #30

I was part of the team that founded this, about 10 years ago if memory serves. I'm still loosely involved, though no longer at Google. Inconsolata was one of the 20 fonts for the original launch, and we're now in the process of launching it as a variable font, with both width and weight axes. I'm also getting funding from them for Rust-based font tools. Feel free to AMA, though no guarantees I'll have good answers.

I currently work on it as well, so happy to pitch in.

Does Google use this to fingerprint and track users across different websites?

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#68

Post by CoolGuySteve »

aloer wrote: post #56

The operating system stats are interesting. Looks like Macs have roughly a 17% share of the windows + mac total requests. The overall market share per wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu... ) is something like 7% for Apple. Fonts are probably used by most "normal" computer users in some way so I wonder where that difference comes from - windows breaks faster and must be replaced m…

Windows computers cost half as much, more or less, for the same specs so the replacement rate is probably much higher. Like for the same price you can buy a PC laptop every 2 years vs 1 Mac laptop every 4 years.

When I worked at Apple, the plastic MacBooks outsold everything else because they were cheapest. It was weird that we did all our power/performance benchmarks on a $2000 15" MacBook Pro when they only made up 10-15% of Mac sales.

From that time, we also knew that Macs were extremely popular for home use, IIRC something like 30-40% penetration, but people were using Windows for work or being given a Windows laptop from work for personal use.

One of the reasons Apple never made a Netbook was that it was an inferior good. People, when asked, prefered a larger screen and trackpad but couldn't afford it. The bottom-tier 11" MacBook Air and the iPad were a response to upsell that demand.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#69

Post by Bedon292 »

Might be a bit of a dumb question. But when I load google.com and look at the requests. It has fonts.google.com says 200 and 'from memory cache' is that actually sending a request in any way to Google? Or is that actually handled locally? Most of the time I am getting this, so not seeming to make actual requests to them the majority of the time. Is it actually hitting their servers for these tracking stats, or is something like that not even making it to these stats?

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#70

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

aloer wrote: post #56

The operating system stats are interesting. Looks like Macs have roughly a 17% share of the windows + mac total requests. The overall market share per wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu... ) is something like 7% for Apple. Fonts are probably used by most "normal" computer users in some way so I wonder where that difference comes from - windows breaks faster and must be replaced m…

Webpages in non-latin alphabets probably use way less fonts from Google Fonts. And Macs are way more popular in English-speaking countries than anywhere else.
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