Internet breaks the billion barrier

Davey Winder
Friday, 23 January 2009 15:41

Business IT - Networking

According to the comScore World Metric audience measurement service, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for a staggering 41 percent of all Internet users on the planet.

Perhaps this should not be too surprising when you consider that China has long been regarded as something of an Internet connected superpower. Indeed, China ranks as the largest single Internet population in the world.

With some 179,710,000 users, or 17.8 percent of the global Internet population, China scrapes ahead of the United States on 16.2 percent with 163,300,000 Internet users.

North America is, however, beaten into third place when it comes to regional share. While Asia-Pacific sits at the top of the tree with that 41.3 percent share, it is Europe that comes in second on a 28 percent share while North America can only manage 18.4 percent.

Making up the numbers on a country by country basis are Japan (59,993,000), Germany (36,992,000) and the United Kingdom (36,664,000).  Australia did not make the top 15 list.

When it comes to the most popular websites, Google online properties totalled 777.9 million visitors in December 2008, followed by Microsoft with 647.9 million visitors) and Yahoo! on 562.6 million. Facebook finished in seventh place with 222 million visitors.

According to comScore CEO Magid Abraham "It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries."