jrsilvey Since it’s possible to have multiple Vivaldi instances on the same system through, for example, Standalone installs, this makes counting more difficult.
When someone installs Vivaldi multiple times on their computer, using separate profiles, we want to count them as one user.
On the other hand, when several people use their own standalone Vivaldi installation (using their own portable drive) on the same computer, on the same Operating System account, we want to count them as separate users.
If I understand this, Vivaldi attempts to count "one user per computer", regardless of how many instances of Vivaldi are installed on the computer or how many different users (that is, profiles) exist on the computer, but counts instances of Vivaldi installed on a distinct from instances of Vivaldi installed on the computer's internal drive. It isn't clear to me what happens with VM's, because VM's are, in theory separate computers.
So I have no idea, really, how many times @WetGeek is counted as a user. He has Vivaldi installed on several devices, and each installation, I gather, would be counted as creating a distinct user despite the fact that he uses, as I understand it, the same profile on each of the devices. In addition, my guess is that each VM installation counts as a distinct user, because VM's register as separate computers.
My guess (and it is only that in the case of VM's) is that he counts as "one user" on each of the devices and "one user" on each VM. I don't know what "active user" means, but I assume that Vivaldi is tracking the number of times an instance signs in, and drops the instance if it doesn't sign in for a while.
@WetGeek's situation is no different than mine, really. I have Edge installed on seven devices, five of them tied to my MSA (that is, my Edge instances are synced via my MSA), two not tied to my MSA. I have no idea whether I am counted by Microsoft as "one user" or "five users" on the five devices where Edge is tied to my MSA (it seems to me that it should be "one user"). I assume that I am counted as a discrete user on the two devices not linked to my MSA (both are Windows 10 stand alone installations not tied to my MSA and I do not sync Edge on those devices, so Microsoft would have no way of knowing that "I am me"). So I could be counted as "one plus two users" or "five plus two users", depending on how Microsoft handles the Edge instances synced to my MSA.
I don't think that it makes much difference, really, and trying to accurately count "users" is a dive into madness (it is the wrong metric). It is sufficient to say, I think that Vivaldi is making an effort not to over count the number of users it claims (and that counts with me) but that the description of "2.4 million users" is an approximation, probably an over count, just as Brave's claim to "25 million users" is an approximation, probably an over count.
I take all vendor claims with a grain of salt, anyway. I have no idea how Google's claim to "2.65 billion" users is determined, or Microsoft's claim to "700 million users" is determined, for example. I treat them all as rough approximations, probably approximations biased toward the high end rather than the low end. I was just curious.
