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US, Asia, Europe Ceding Web Dominance

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hello-new-friends dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new study shows that presence of the US, Asia, and Western European countries on the web is strongly declining. Newly internet-empowered countries are booming; many geographical regions are showing exponential growth, including Eastern Europe and South America. Chris Harrison explains: 'Countries that have never been able to place a website in the top 500 are now pushing dozens of established websites out of this prestigious list. This trend is both recent (within the last two years) and accelerating. Interestingly, Asia is seeing it's presence eroded the fastest, especially China.'"

7 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Not really surprising by softwareengineer99 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is not really surprising as the most population of the US was an early adapter. Now that the remaining world is getting hold of it, their presence is growing.

    1. Re:Not really surprising by smallfries · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is not really suprising that statistics can be made to say anything that you want. It would be suprising if the web presence of the US / Europe / Asia was in decline. What could cause this momentous change in direction? Is this a new trend that could change the face of the world as we know it???

      Err, no. It's just some twat pumping traffic to his site. So lets look at what he's done shall we:
            * Traffic is declining to first-world web domains!!!
      No, not true. The relative share of domains in the top-500 has decreased. Overall traffic and numbers of domains are still increasing. Ahh, so what is being measured as a "top-500" site? Obviously we can bias this any way we want. Does it explain anywhere on the site how this measurement is performed.... no.

            * All URL's are geographically based!!!
      No, .com does not imply an American company. So the shift in traffic from generic TLD's to country code TLD's for sites in this mythical "top-500" could be explained by a change in presence. That companies no longer want a generic TLD for a "global presence" and instead want a national image. That would be an interesting explanation of the "data", but no, lets go for a screaming headline to pump up traffic in our slashvertisment.

            * Believe what I've told you!!!
      We have bold claims about traffic to a wide range of internet domains. There is no description on the site of how the data is gathered. Is this opt-in traffic reporting? Does this guy happen to own a large amount of internet infrastructure? Is it one of the largest benign bot-nets in existence? Or is it the answer behind door D...

      Complete, and utter, bullshit.

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
  2. Re:Africa? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Dude, most Africans are struggling to find enough food to keep them alive for another day. They really don't give a fuck about the Internet, OLPC, Live Aid, or anything else from the west.

  3. Where are Canada, Australia, New Zealand? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Dividing the world into the US, Latin America, Europe, and Asia leaves some people out.

  4. And what the hell does it matter? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The good news is that there really isn't a limit to the Internet. I mean I suppose some day we will run in to physical limits on computing power/storage and thus run in to limits as to how much there can eventually be, but for now the net can grow as needed. Other countries having more does not imply the US will have less. In fact, it implies that everyone will have more since we all have access to it.

    It stands to reason that, percentage wise, the US will start falling since it is getting somewhat saturated. If you get to the point that literally everyone has a web page (we aren't their yet but blogs are pushing that direction) where else is there to go? However that doesn't mean that the amount of US content or usage will be going down, just that it won't be going up at as fast a rate as elsewhere since it is near maximum.

    As you said, whole lot of nothing. You can sum it up as "People like the Internet and usage continues to grow." Really? I never would have guessed :P.

  5. Re:Whole lotta nothin'... by mpiktas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Decline, or hiccup? I think that though graphs are pretty, analysis is a bit poor. So South America and Eastern increased their presence, so? US still dominates big time. Also I noticed that in Poland, one of the top sites is google.pl. It is still US company site. What this analysis lacks is greater insight into those 500 sites. Also 500% sure looks impressive growth, but when you consider, that it all happens in region below 5%, it is just noise. I would like to see how the trends develop, three years time is too short to make any far fetching conclusions.

  6. Re:Thanks, in no small part, to America by stinerman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Indeed.

    I'm looking at buying a home with my soon-to-be wife. The only houses that are even close to being affordable in the region are those that have serious structural problems and need a decent amount of work. Even with an FHA loan, we're going to have a hard time making payments along with our student loans.

    I recently read that in the 20s and 30s home loans usually had a 5 year term. Of course, now anything less than a 15-year term is rare with 30 and even 50-year mortgages becoming common. I'll be damned if I'm going to be paying on my house when I'm retired. But then again, at this rate I probably won't be retired when I'm in my mid-70s.

    It is no laughing matter that our standard of living is falling and no one seems to give a damn.