Popular media suggests again and again that the internet is a world-wide phenomina, but I have found a woefull shortfall of information about businesses in countries other than the U.S. So I’m guessing that yanks still hold the lionshare of users and content providers. Anyone know what the statistics are nowadays?
I have at least a rough idea. But it depends on whether you’re interested in users, or servers, or domains, or what. There are many different ways to look at it, and many different definitions of what “on the internet” means - it’s kind of a fuzzy concept.
Anyway, obviously at one point, the US was 100% of the internet, and it has been dropping since then, and will continue to drop. As of the Dec 1998, about 56% of the people on the internet were in the US. (It actually could be anywhere between 52% and 60% depending on just how you count “on the net”). It should fall below 50% soon, if it hasn’t already by mid 1999 here.
The US is not the country with the highest % of its users on the internet. Iceland is higher, and there are one or perhaps two others, but I’ve forgotten which (maybe Finland? - don’t quote me on this). But since the US has a much larger population, it still is by far the largest in absolute numbers. It won’t be a majority for much longer, but it will probably be a plurality for quite a long time yet.
When you look at it by the % of widely used servers (things like www.cnn.com, or whatever else), the US is still easily the majority of the net, which may explain why it seems heavily US-biased. Some is probably also explained by the fact that if you don’t speak, say, German, you probably mostly search for English language pages and don’t even see the ones in German.
One factoid of unknown accuracy I just found on a web site claims “92 million internet users over the age of 16 in the US and Canada in April 1999, up from 79 million 9 months ago”.
k0myers
Some other factoids I found (these don’t actually pertain to your question, but what the hey 
These numbers vary, BTW, depending on the source, because there are different ways to count them. Ok, hopefully this table will show up relatively un-mangled - I’ve never tried a table on the SDMB before, so we’ll see what happens here.
<table BORDER=1>
<tr><th>Year</th><th ALGIN=Left># of nodes</th></tr>
<tr><td>1969</td><td> 4 (UCLA, Standford, UCSB, Univ of Utah)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1971</td><td> 23 (email introduced)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1972</td><td> (telnet introduced)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1973</td><td> First non-US nodes on the net, in England, Norway, and Canada.</td></tr>
<tr><td>1976</td><td> 111</td></tr>
<tr><td>1979</td><td> (usenet introduced)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1981</td><td> 213</td></tr>
<tr><td>1983</td><td> 563 (this was my first year on the net!)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1984</td><td> 1024</td></tr>
<tr><td>1985</td><td> 1961</td></tr>
<tr><td>1986</td><td> 2308</td></tr>
<tr><td>1987</td><td> 28174</td></tr>
<tr><td>1988</td><td> 56000</td></tr>
<tr><td>1990</td><td> 313000</td></tr>
<tr><td>1991</td><td> 617000 (gopher introduced)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1992</td><td> 1136000 (http introduced)</td></tr>
<tr><td>1993</td><td> 2056000</td></tr>
<tr><td>1994</td><td> 3864000</td></tr>
<tr><td>1995</td><td> 6642000</td></tr>
</table>
God, that looks horrible. Apparently plain old html tables don’t come across so well. Let’s try again as plain text here (maybe the moderator can delete that abomination
(This doesn’t pertain to the original question, but I thought it was interesting anyway).
Year: # of nodes
1969: 4 (UCLA, Standford, UCSB, Univ of Utah)
1971: 23 (email introduced)
1972: (telnet introduced)
1973: First non-US nodes on the net, in England, Norway, and Canada.
1976: 111
1979: (usenet introduced)
1981: 213
1983: 563 (this was my first year on the net!)
1984: 1024
1985: 1961
1986: 2308
1987: 28174
1988: 56000
1990: 313000
1991: 617000 (gopher introduced)
1992: 1136000 (http introduced)
1993: 2056000
1994: 3864000
1995: 6642000
I’m sorry, I thought this was another masturbation thread. Goodbyeee.
Well, I know my node useage has increased since '69.
>>>>don’t quote me on this<<<<
ha ha i did it anyway!!!
i am on a never-ending quest to eliminate capital letters
Again, Yank bashing.
Does it matter?
One of the things that slowed Internet usage in Europe is phone rates. I know people whjo use Compuserve, but strictly stay in their profesional area because they are paying long distance for the net connection. Some countries have expanded calling areas around cities to bring in more rural customers. The provider networks have developed somewhat differently over there. University people always have the net at home, others are not so lucky.
I saw a statistic somewhere that most of the actual data traffic on the Internet now is X-rated materials.
I know, it starts to sound like a UL. But thinking about the size of graphic files, I thought it was quite possible.
It’s not long distance alone that’s a factor. The US has unmetered local calling plans available, which many places do not have. In the UK, for instance, I believe there’s a per-minute charge even if you’re just calling across the street.