Monday, January 16, 2006
Millions vs. Billions
byThe United States will soon pass a major milestone. Sometime later this year, the population of our country will reach 300 million people.
It took us 125 years as a country to get to 100 million people, reaching that number around 1914. It was in 1967, about 53 years later, that we passed 200 million. And now just 39 later, we will be hitting the 300 million mark. Experts predict it will only take about 30 more years to swell our population to 400 million. These facts seem impressive when you consider our country’s ever-shortening cycle to add the next 100 million people.
However, I couldn’t help compare our country’s population growth to some recent astonishing statistics I read about worldwide Internet growth. Based on figures from Internet World Stats, the Internet first surpassed 100 million users in 1998. By the year 2000, there were 300 million users, and by 2003, there were 600 million users. Recently, the Internet surpassed one billion users and it is adding a million new users worldwide about every four days. Most of those new users are not from the U.S., and most of those new users don’t speak English.
Right now, the top language for Internet users is English (about 32 percent). Chinese is the second most common language with about 13 percent of the total. However, the Interent growth for the Chinese language is over 200 percent faster than English language Web sites.
The point here is that although the United States gave birth to the Internet, it will soon be such a pervasive worldwide communications vehicle, that it will be difficult for the United States to enjoy the level of influence over the Web that it has had in the past. It is also interesting to note that although the Internet originated in the United States, the World Wide Web, which is what really makes the Web useful for most of us, is a European contribution that came from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. No matter who gets the credit, the truth of the matter is that much of the next round of growth on the Web will come from countries other than the U.S. or Europe.
The Internet governance battle recently came to a head this last fall, with a World Summit in Tunis. The United States came away with a victory in this battle, but with the growth of the Internet accelerating, and considering how much of that growth is outside the U.S., it promises to stay “interesting” in the years ahead to see if the United States can maintain its dominant role in shaping the Web of the future.
