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I never considered WordPress and Joomla! to be competitors, but more like apples and pears. WordPress is a Blogging Platform and Joomla! is a Content Management System.

During the Dutch Joomla!Days 2009 I saw a Google Chart which made me realise the huge development WordPress has gone through lately. I’ve been very alert ever since and I watch the differences closely. I admire WordPress for its fast and innovative features, while, at the same time, Joomla! is the robust “engine” that big websites use without anyone knowing about it; invisible, ungrateful and yet super reliable… And guess what? In the US WordPress is more popular than Joomla!, although the numbers we get from Google Trends should be interpreted: the chart doesn’t show the install base, but rather the amount of information Google hosts on both topics. And besides: these charts can easily be used for propaganda, as an image is easier remembered later on, than the explanatory guidelines, telling you exactly how it was to interpret the image…

About Google Trends: It’s great fun: you can truly match anything against everything (provided that Google has enough data): you can literally compare apples and pears and if you want, you can even throw in a refrigerator as well. It doesn’t matter to Google. Whatever you want. they find. Think of the possibilities…

Funny as it may sound, it feels as if I see more and more WordPress around me. Even websites that I considered to be “real” websites 😉 WordPress is clearly doing well and I think their big advantage is being more recognisable than Joomla!, but I could be mistaken (Guido thinks I am)…

Anyway: I hope Joomla! 1.6 will bring us a lot of good *soon* and I hope they may inspire one another for a long, long time! 🙂