The global internet audience has passed the 1 billion mark for the first time, with two thirds of this rapidly expanding population experiencing the web through Microsoft sites.
The official milestone is recorded in new data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service, which confirmed the UK’s web population at 36.7 million, the world’s fifth largest. Over 3.6 per cent of those logging onto the internet do so in the UK.
The comScore data also records the exceptional penetration of Microsoft sites within this global audience: Microsoft reaches 64.2 per cent of worldwide web users, attracting nearly 650 million unique users.
Magid Abraham, president and CEO of comScore, described the 1 billion figure as “a significant landmark in the history of the internet.” He said, “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.”
One in every four of the world’s internet users is European, with the region enjoying a 28 per cent share of the global internet population. Europe’s web population is second only to that of Asia-Pacific, with a 41 per cent share. North America accounts for 18 per cent, Latin America 7 per cent, and the Middle East and Africa 5 per cent.
China represented the largest online audience in the world in December 2008 with 180 million users, nearly 18 per cent of the total worldwide internet audience.
According to comScore, the true internet audience is likely to be even higher: the service’s data includes only users aged 15 and older, who log on from computers at home and work; it excludes web use in internet cafés, and the growing number of people logging on from mobile phones and PDAs.
Abraham added, “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.”
