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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. Africa? by bhouston · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I noticed in Chris Harrison's website a lot of talk of "the rest of the world enters front and center stage" but while he discussed North America, Europe, Asia and South America, he didn't mention Africa at all. Any word on what's up with Africa and internet usage, let alone the most popular domains? I know little about this subject, but am curious now.

    1. Re:Africa? by imemyself · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That might be the case in central Africa, but I would think that it might be a little different in more industrialized nations like Egypt and South Africa. I've heard of bloggers in Egypt several times (one that got arrested IIRC), so I'm assuming that the Internet is atleast somewhat common there.

      --
      Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
    2. Re:Africa? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I am an African prince. If you help get my website out of this country onto the top 500 list I will share millions of US dollars with you.

    3. Re:Africa? by alienmole · · Score: 5, Informative

      Googling for "site:za" brings up 16 million hits, so there's some activity there, but compare that to 7 billion pages in the .com domain. That's obviously not an entirely fair comparison, since .com is used globally, but it gives some idea.

      Companies like Amazon have development offices in South Africa, to exploit cheap talent. But in general, although South Africa is industrialized, the proportion of the population wealthy enough to have Internet access is pretty small. Here's an article, Internet Access in South Africa, 2002, which suggests 3.1 million users at the end of 2002, and that number wasn't growing fast. Costs for Internet access are still relatively high.

    4. Re:Africa? by Telvin_3d · · Score: 5, Informative

      A better comparison for your "site:za" (South Africa) might be "site:ca" (Canada).

      South Africa, population 47 million
      Canada, population 32 million

      South Africa .za web presence 16 million
      Canada .ca web presence 107 million

      That's quite the divide, isn't it?

  2. In other news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Developing world developing.

  3. South Africa by mac1235 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The infrastructure is good here, but there is a monopoly carrier, Telkom. Bandwidth is so exorbitant overseas hosting is common. Unfortunately this is not likely to change soon. see http://www.hellcom.co.za/ for a Telkom hate site, or google "incompetent idiot", the first result is the one you want.