ClickStream's figures are not surprising. A NPD Group Inc. survey reported similar findings last year.
But the ClickStream findings may arouse some skepticism. The company's CEO, Cameron Turner, formerly worked at Microsoft doing similar market research on Microsoft Office and its competitors.
Turner said ClickStream was not paid by Microsoft to conduct this study.
He added that ClickStream does paid research projects for a number of software vendors, including Microsoft and a major competitor, Adobe Systems Inc. It also monitors the use of Mac and Linux software .
He added that ClickStream today does paid research projects for a number of software vendors, including Microsoft and a major competitor, Adobe Systems Inc. It also monitors the use of Mac and Linux software.
According to ClickStream's findings, Google Docs was even less popular than Corel Corp.'s WordPerfect suite.
Version 12 of WordPerfect alone was used by 3 percent of users, according to ClickStream's panel, which includes users recruited through cash and prizes, making it the third most popular productivity application behind OpenOffice.org. Adding up versions 9 through 13 of WordPerfect gave it a total usage of 6 percent, though ClickStream said the likelihood of overlap meant that its actual share was still lower than that of OpenOffice.org.
ClickStream's figures for OpenOffice.org include usage of StarOffice, a near-identical version that is sold for US$70 and officially supported by Sun Microsystems. Google began distributing StarOffice via its free Google Pack download service in August 2007.
But it recently pulled StarOffice from Google Pack, suggesting that Google is starting to feel competitive with OpenOffice.org.