The Internet

Since the inception of the first commercial dialup (ISP – internet service provider ) in the United States in 1989 and the first dial up on the US west coast in 1996, the growth has been phenomenal. Estimates that since the beginning  of the internet and up until June this year, more than 150 billion pages have been archived. Now a part of our everyday life is e-mail, which actually started way back in 1965 and was a very important in the creation of the internet. After years of speculation and huge investments in the net, during  2000 the dot com bubble burst and a majority of dot com companies ceased trading.

In 2000 the estimated number of active global sites was 17.7 million, which included 9.5 million dot com domains. At the end of 2008 the number websites had reached 187 million, which included  31 million added in 2008. During that year the number of e-mail users worldwide had reached a staggering 1.3 billion and growing. The number of e-mails sent per day was 210 billion, but the down side of  this is the fact that 70% of e-mails are spam, which is approximately 54 trillion per year. Just think about that !!

Domain names increased about 19% during 2008, taking the total number of domains to 175 million worldwide, which includes 77.5 million dot com names.

Major internet users around the world, by the end of 2000 were divided into the following.

Asia        : 15.9 million
UK        : 12.8 million
Europe        : 11.0 million
North America    : 40.5 million

At the end of 2008, the figures for IP registrations were.

Asia        : 578 million
Europe        : 384 million
North America    : 248 million
South America    : 139 million
Africa        :  51  million
Middle East    :  42  million
Oceania/Aust    :  20  million

These figures show a misconception that the biggest user of the internet is North America, but in fact it is Asia, and has been for the last 10 years at least. I suppose this is all relative considering population.

One of the fastest growing areas of the internet is the “ blog “. Now reaching users worldwide of 133 million. The number of posts on blogs during 2008 reached 329 million.

An unfortunate side of the internet is the number of people who find it self gratifying to inflict their views on people, by the use of viruses. The number of viruses increased by 468% from 2007 to 2008.

The increase in the use of all forms of the internet makes you realize what a huge influence the WWW has had on our lives and makes you wonder what the future holds.

Tags: archive, domain names, email, internet, spam