Yes, but it also has many conditionals, for example:

- The faster package may have been available for a shorter amount of time and so downloads have not had the time to catch up yet.

- Many people may not be aware of the faster package, but they would switch if they knew.

- Maybe people are aware of the faster package, but there are switching costs that prevent them from adopting it right now that are greater than the costs incurred from the slower package.

I think its pretty safe to say most (bit not all) users of deflate don't have it in their hot path and arent zipping super large files.

How does it help? You could just as well compare to some slow popular Python version if all you need is "revealed preference"

Recent downloads per day show the opposite trend, with 2500k vs 1600k per day (with zlib-rs leading). The issue is zlib-rs is far younger so looking at total downloads is nonsense. And there is inertia to switch over as well.