Analysis of searches for Abandonwares

Greetings to all!

        My first semester is finished and we have a fortnight of preparation leave before the final exam. It was pretty busy, specially near the end of semester for completion of all the remaining stuff. During this semester we were supposed to make a management system project in vb6. Yes you read that right. VB6. As you might be aware, many engineering colleges in India are still using very old softwares written in the 1990's for their academics. Even though we were free to choose any latter versions of visual basic, most of the students preferred to go with vb6 for their project. This is because we were supposed to use that software for all our college assignments. Even the official support from microsoft for vb6 ended a few years ago. 

        This made me curious about the current usage of such old softwares like vb6, turbo c, oracle database 8/9 etc. So, since we're having some free time in hand during PLs, I did some analysis on google trends about these softwares (Or as they are called -Abandonwares- the softwares which are abandoned or rarely used). It came up with some interesting findings which I am going to share here with u all...

1) Turbo C 

This screenshot shows how the usage of turbo c has been prominently declining, especially during 2005-2006. Since then it has been steadily going down. Below that, we can see the top countries which are googling for 'turbo c'. Philipines at the top followed by India and its neighbours. Striking fact is that Philipines and India are rapidly developing in IT related sectors. 

This chart is for just another related search term "turbo c" (notice the space). As it shows, it is most googled for from India.

This graph shows comparative statistics for "turboc" search term from four different countries.

Developing countries-
1. India (blue)
2. Brazil (green)

Developed countries-
1. USA (red)
2. UK (yellow)

As you can see, the search volume from developed countries is negligibly low, and even for Brazil, it has considerably gone down.

This shows the results for the same search term "turboc" from different parts of India. As there are many engineering colleges in southern India, you can see those states leading this chart.

This graph shows the time series of the same search term for India. What I find interesting is that, it reflects the time range followed by the semester pattern in most engineering colleges in India. In January, the spring semester begins which is reflected by the rise you can see in Jan 2013. The semester usually ends in April and in may we have summer breaks. This is outlined by the dip in graph after Apr 2013. In June-July, the fall semester starts which is again indicated by the rise in searches for "turboc".


2) Visual Basic 6

The world seems to be steadily giving up on Visual Basic 6. Here what we have is almost linear line indicating how the searches for vb6 has been declined. 

Coming to the comparative graph of the previous 4 countries. USA, UK and Brazil seems to have gave up on vb6 and moved on to more recent versions. While India is seen catching up very fastly. And again the south states are leading from India - Tamilnadu, Pondicherry and Kerala being first, second and third respectively.

Similarly for the search term "visual basic 6". We dont see much difference here.

Here I got little more curious about what my fellow mates are searching about vb projects and did a little more digging...

This graph shows interest over time for the search term "vb project". Again it outlines the time range for semester pattern followed - Jan to Apr and Jul to Nov - Indicated by crests and dips at May and Dec. The time series graph for the search term "projects in vb" has a very identical shape to this one. 

I checked the interest of different cities in india for this "projects in vb" search term and found that Coimbatore is the winner at 100 and chennai coming after far margin at 18. My city, Pune, is at 3rd position.

According to google trends, these 5 are related searches for the term "projects in vb" -
1. Code project
2. Vb projects
3. Library Management System
4. Hotel Management System
5. Hospital Management System

India seems to be the only out of the 4 countries we are considering, googling for "vb project".


3) Windows XP

We use windows xp in many of the academic institutions in our country and the following graph reflects the same. Although there has been fast transition to newer operating systems.

The legends are same as followed in previous graphs. 

4) Oracle 9i

Again, being an old software, the searches for oracle 9i are declining throughout the world. The part of the graph after 2005 is very similar to the graph of inverse function (y = 1/x).

Again, India is the leading googler for the search term "oracle 9i".

But there is silver lining too. We have moved on to the newer versions of oracle database and searches for oracle 9i have been significantly reduced. Almost at par with other countries after 2011.

5) Internet Explorer

Ok this is not an old software, still newer versions are coming but just for fun, here are the top countries searching for IE :P

And this last graph shows the comparison for the 4 countries we are considering... We can see surge in searches for the years in which major versions of IE were released. Although there are some other factors responsible for less number of searches, people's interest in IE seems to be waning! :P

Thank you for reading my article. I hope you found it informative. :)