Firefox sets the World Record

I have been checking out the Firefox map of its World Record attempt at:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

The map is obviously a pretty good indicator of technology acceptance in the various countries with North America and Western Europe hitting the top notches and Africa, South America, and Asia being less well served. I do feel it's a shame that the results aren't also computed in relation to the actual population of each country though.

For instance, France and Spain both downloaded more copies (well above 300,000) compared to Russia where "only" around 130,000 downloads occurred. Yet Russia appears dark red. And a country like Belgium appears in orange.

Let's compare some numbers to show where I am coming from.

Wikipedia tells us Russia's population in 2008 is around: 142,008,838 and we know from Firefox that 134,442, which brings us to 0.09% of the population.

The population of Belgium is around 10,000,000 and we know from Firefox that 69,760 downloads occurred over the 24-hour download period, which is about 0.7% of the population. So, although the map is a good indicator of the global distribution of downloads, it really does give as skewed vision on a per-country basis.

What also struck me was the huge discrepancy between Southern Ireland and the UK. At first sight, Ireland looks like it didn't support the SpreadFirefox initative all that much at all - it shows in pale orange and is hardly worth the notice on that map next to it's dark red neighbour.
Well, let's check it out.

Populations in the UK and Ireland are respectively estimated at around: 60,587,000 and 4,339,000. Firefox downloads reached 387,488 and 42,993 respectively.
The actual percentage of downloads reached: 0.6% in the UK but virtually 1.0% for the Republic of Ireland!

[EDIT: 2008-06-19]
So let's recap with our new numbers:

• UK, 0.6%, dark red


• Belgium, 0.7%, orange


• Ireland, 1.0%, light orange

The colors show the exact opposite to what the true representation in these countries actually is!
[/EDIT]

One last thing caught my eye. Notice the difference between North and South Korea?

Any thoughts?