The Internet Today

Sometimes it is fun to look to see how the world has changed over the years. On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee posted his World Wide Web project to the “alt.hypertext” newsgroup. This project was the very first website. Computer networks and bulletin board services existed before then, but this was the first time the Internet was published as we know it today. Since that date, the Internet has grown significantly.

• As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion Internet users around the world. That is over half of the people alive in the world today.
• The countries with the most Internet users are, in order: China, India, and the United States. The United States has 313 million users, which is almost everybody in the country.
• More than 1.8 billion websites are currently available, and 194 million of them are considered “active.”
• The two most popular websites in the world are Google.com and YouTube.com. Around 500 hours of video are uploaded to the website YouTube.com every 1 minute.
• The most popular web browser is Google Chrome. It accounts for about 65% of all internet traffic. Apple Safari is used by about 17% of users, and Mozilla Firefox about 4%.
• The three most popular social media platforms in the world are Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp. Instagram and TikTok together have about the same number of users as Facebook.
• Since the early days of the Internet, people have been trying to figure out how to capitalize on it. Google’s ad revenue in 2020 was around 146 billion dollars.
• About half of all Internet users use an ad-blocker to stop advertisements from reaching them.
• In 2009 a new currency was created called Bitcoin. This currency would not have been possible without the Internet connecting computers together.
• The Internet also brings with it some new issues of its own. Viruses and malware spread more easily when all machines are connected. Ransomware is also a very significant threat.
• According to a recent Google Transparency Report, despite the threats, less than 2% of websites scanned in China, the US, the UK, Germany, and Spain contained bad websites.
• There are excellent job opportunities in computer security fields. It is estimated that about 500,000 cybersecurity jobs are open in the US right now.

A lot has changed in the 30 years since that first web page was available via a phone line. Since then, we have been able to get wireless Internet on our televisions, telephones, and every device in between. At ITC, our Blast Wi-Fi will help ensure you are ready for the next significant Internet change.

-Michael Martinell, The Broadband Guy