It is almost impossible to find out any solid statistics about the Internet. The reason is that our global net is becoming incomprehensibly bigger every second. The statistics that were made a year ago, or just a month ago, are no longer valid. So, I will stick to the facts that are not likely to be changed ever.
But before that, let´s see what the Internet really is. People often think the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) are the same thing. They are not. World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents that people are accessing using the Internet. The Internet is a system of interconnected computer networks. So, in plain terms, the Internet is the hardware and World Wide Web is the software.
Let´s see how they started.
The internet began in 1960´s at MIT. It is much sooner than anyone would say, because it took some time for the creators to make it usable worldwide. The first word ever transmitted over the Internet was LOG. It is not a kind of a code but a failed attempt to write LOGIN. The newly created network wasn´t able to withstand the greater amount of data after writing the letter ‘G’. The result was the crash of the network and leaving only half of the intended word online.
After some fine-tuning, creators managed to put together the first web page. It´s URL was and still is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html . The page was dedicated to the first “WorldWideWeb” project containing a lot of information about it. At that time, it was the only page on the Internet. The original page is lost, but the recreated content is still available at the same link.
You know how today, most people (statistics say 50%, but as I already mentioned, they can´t be trusted) use the Internet for sharing files using torrent or some similar streaming media? Well, the authorities had a similar problem in the late 1980´s when one web site was actually forced to shut down.
Search engines made our lives on the Internet much easier. Although Google wasn´t the first it is certainly the best when it comes to finding the data on the Internet. But Google had some initial problems too. Did you ever wonder why Google looks the way it does; Why it only has a field to enter the keywords and a search button? It is left from the times when founders of Google didn´t know much about HTML or design, but only concentrated on finding the information.
Today, according to Google, there are more than five million terabytes of information on the Internet. For those of you who don´t know, one terabyte is 1024 gigabytes, and one million has six zeros. Do the math on your own.
All that data contains many pictures and about 80 per cent of them are of naked women. Pornography also takes one third of all Internet searches.
Ok, I know I said that the statistics can´t be trusted, but I found it quite interesting. You can decide whether you think they are still valid.
There are 18 countries that still don´t have access to the Internet.
70% of Americans use the Internet and on the other hand only 3% of Africans us it.
There is only 17 per cent of world population on the Internet. One third of them come from Asia.
All URL-s from www.aaa.com to www.zzz.com are already taken.
North Korea´s internet statistics are confidential.
As any technology, the Internet has come a long way since that one web page. Today, we use it to watch videos, play games, post pictures and much more. It is only a matter of time when the things we can do now on the Internet will be considered obsolete and there will be some other article laughing about it.
