HN user
The author of the article is following the lazy and tired "Point at that hippie and laugh" formula, complete with a "Right on, man" ending. Maybe that's expected for a mainstream publication like Businessweek?
Other than that, the article is interesting.
I didn't understand why NetMarketShare's Internet Explorer market share numbers were so much higher than other sources. Then I found this page - http://marketshare.hitslink.com/weighting.aspx - which says "...We now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports".
China has a LOT of IE6 users because of historical issues related to SSL export restrictions. NetMarketShare's 11% number for IE6 is higher than IE7 (8%), which is ridiculous. So unless you have a lot of Chinese users, the number from StatCounter (5%) is probably closer to the truth - http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201001...