US, Asia, Europe Ceding Web Dominance 123
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.'"
Not really surprising (Score:1, Insightful)
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Re:Not really surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
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,
* 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.
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When the analysis starts with ".com addresses are US websites" you may as well stop reading.
Who is this "Zonk" fellow who posted the article? did he not read it or is he/she new to the internet?
Obviously US traffic is declining because their tubes are all blocked-up with pirates!
Africa? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Africa? (Score:5, Interesting)
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We don't hear as much as we should do, but that's likely to be a language barrier rather than technological.
Its much like knowing there is a great Chinese internet population, but a totally different (and relatively rare) thing to speak to 'native' folks without much Western custom imparted.
I hope Googles auto-translation thing hits the spot.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=egypt+linux +users [google.co.uk]
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___
greetz go out to eglug and arabeyes dudes and geekettes reading
Re:Africa? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [theworx.biz], 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.
Re:Africa? (Score:5, Informative)
South Africa, population 47 million
Canada, population 32 million
South Africa
Canada
That's quite the divide, isn't it?
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The whole point of "
South Africa (Score:5, Informative)
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And many the other results show she's in good company
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Re:Africa? (Score:5, Funny)
Mobile phones (Score:2)
I don't know how factual that is though.
Re:Africa? (Score:5, Informative)
Based on the contracts I've been validating over the last six months (w/the Chinese govt. making loans to help them buy such things...from Chinese suppliers, of course), Africa is just now getting the hardware to support a telecom infrastructure. I'd give it at least another 24 months before it could even think about penetrating any part of CH's listings.
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Want to know why? (Score:2, Funny)
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In other news! (Score:5, Funny)
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Not sure... Seeing what my fellow brazilians did to Orkut, sometimes it feels like it's going backwards.
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"Ceding"? (Score:3, Funny)
In China's case ... (Score:2, Redundant)
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You're probably on to something there. The popular idea that China is the next economic and social superpower has a major flaw - they're still politically communist, regardless of their market practices. That'll hold back true expansion no matter what you make for the rest of the world or how much you sell it for.
The "next big thing"? India. Maybe Eastern Europe, but doubtful. Russia is probably closer to a civil war (or revolution) than anyone wants to admit, and Iron Curtain or no,
Whole lotta nothin'... (Score:5, Informative)
"Despite the Internet being a global network, the US has traditionally dominated."
Then later:
"The Internet is still dominated by the United States,"
In other words... Nothing has changed. Figures indicate Eastern Europe is now up to 1%, compared to the US, and South America is nearing 2%.
Good to see it happening, but this is statistical static, worthy of a one-sentence mention in the on-screen ticker of whatever stock/business news program you watch... A complete non-story.
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And what the hell does it matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
It stands to reason that, percentage wise, the US will start falling since it is getting somewhat saturated
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Remember, even if you lose a dollar a transaction, you'll make it up in volume!
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Oh well (Score:2)
The observation about China's slow internet growth is interesting - maybe their draconion Internet policies are starting to bite. Might this be an early sign of China hitting an economi
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I'd say it's more an indication that their firewall works both ways.
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As broadband build-out continues, this isn't news (Score:2)
As the Internet is the ultimate flattener of the earth, there are no surprises here. What's interesting is that many thought that everything from google to ebay would dominate the world's commerce. Well, it did for a while, and naturally (lacking cultural adaptation to specific international markets) they're failing where other sites are now quite culturally a
american tlds? (Score:1)
Factor in microsoft's pc domination and suddenly it becomes obvious that MS products and services are bound to appear at the top. Oh, and of course english being the main language for internatio
Thanks, in no small part, to America (Score:2)
For creating the Internet, and for pushing the globalization to enrich the poor of the world to use it.
I'm holding the English edition of today's "The Japan Times", where it says: "Global economy best in 30 years".
We could do a lot better — various illiberals are holding us back — but we are still doing pretty well.
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i wonder how they measure that, because the middle class is eroding at an exponential rate, and real housing prices have now exceeded by a wide magin the realistic income of most americans.
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The rest of the world is getting to be a lot better off as the comparatively weathly Americans come down a peg or two. Americans aren't saddled with 50-70% tax rates like much of the rest of the world. Americans aren't working in sweatshop conditions with the legal system of the country standing firmly behind the overseers.
But America is having its economy turned into one where only the highly intelligent knowledge workers have a job. Ordinary jobs requring
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funny how that's not happening in europe.
there is no excuse for the continued draining of the american economy into these places. if they want money they should do it themselves, not at the expense of our economy.
and if you dont believe our legal system is not standing firmly behind the overseers than y
No happening in Europe? (Score:2)
Our companies just started shipping jobs away, but that doesn't mean they don't do it, it only means that they're (as usual) about 5-10 years behind the US.
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probably because there is no party there which believes in voodoo economics like over here.
if it becomes a problem they will no doubt find a way to stop it.
meanwhile the US does absolutely nothing, and in fact has been allowing the accelaration of the process.
my generation will probably be the last generation to see any return at all from a college education, and forget ranks,
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The catchphrase for it all is to be "competitive" on the global market and protection of work places here which would be lost if we don't lower our standards to match east europe and asia. What I fail to see is how a work place in a sweatshop should be worthy of protection.
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What they don't say is that "The EU" is comprised of exactly the same crooked parties.
"The EU" is by no means better or worse than your government. It's pretty much the same. With the difference that it's far, far away and we ridicule it for making pointless guidelines that forc
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Since your in such an optimistic frame of mind, let me tell you something. That you worked hard and went to school, is admirable. That others may have just worked and not went to school is also admirable.. but neither road is a guarantee of anything. This is a fact of life, no matter what your degree was in. I have known lawyers that were unemployed.. I have
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this is illustrated best in the way they have been treating IT as a throwaway profession. the economy goes down and the it people take the brunt, then they start h1bing and offshoring to the point you have 30 year industry vets on dice talking about how they havent found a job in the past 1.5 years. As a result, cs ma
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I work in whole different environment now, and our director of purchasi
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America has minimum wage, welfare, free education, all sorts of safety nets, and favourable employment laws. American kids are not forced to work 100 hours a week to pay off their parents' debts.
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what propaganda have you been reading?
inflation adjusted housing price indices graphed for the last hundred years. [eclectecon.com]
you have it wrong.. most middle class americans are seeing their wages fail to adjust upward to meet inflation due to h1b's and offshoring, and are being forced to run up their home equity like credit cards to maintain
Re:Thanks, in no small part, to America (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
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Mortgage loan terms were limited to 50 percent of the property's market value, with a repayment schedule spread over three to five years and ending with a balloon payment.
You were right. Thanks for catching that.
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That chart ignores the effect of mortgage rate changes and wage growth (though admittedly small recently) on affordability [frbsf.org].
Wages have been stagnant when inflation adjusted. People h
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therefore it by its nature takes income into account.
mortgage rate changes mean absolutely nothing in the long run because mortgage interest is tax deductible.
I dont live in cali or the northeast, i live in the atlanta metropolitan area, and housing prices have tripled in the last decade around here. have wages tripled?
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interest deductability only gets you back a percentage of the interest money you pay, and the lower the tax bracket the less it helps. Interest rates play a major factor in how much money is left in your pocket, or how much house you can afford.
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By GDP per capita adjusted for cost of living, life expectancy, industrial capacity, average rate of inflation, average rate of unemployment, nearly every other indicator in the world.
As for your other assertion, that the American middle class is "eroding" at an "exponential rate", I why do you say that. Unemploymen
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also, cost of living indices have been publically stated to leave out huge real expenses such as energy prices, among others.
further in this thread you will see a price/income index for real estate graphed for the last hundred years by the man who predicted the
finaly, the thing about wages is
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By GDP per capita adjusted for cost of living, life expectancy, industrial capacity, average rate of inflation, average rate of unemployment, nearly every other indicator in the world.
As for your other assertion, that the American middle class is "eroding" at an "exponential rate", why do you say that?
Unemployment
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Hm.
I assume you haven't read Joseph Stiglitz' "Globalization and its malcontents". The problem with globalization is that you get institutions like the World Bank and the IMF that fuck up things for the nations they are "helping". I've read a large number of articles on globalization, and it's not all it's cracked up to be by the conservative money-brokers.
Globalization works best in an environment with free trade where developing nations are left in charge
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Americans are always so smug about that, but mass usage of the Internet would have gone nowhere without the WWW, which is a European invention [wikipedia.org].
What the Americans really created, of course, was not the Internet but ARPANET [wikipedia.org], its predecessor. The first international ARPANET link (to Norway) was established in 1973. What is nowadays called the Internet, i.e. the huge internetwork based on TCP/IP, didn't
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Been there, refuted that [slashdot.org]:
Where are Canada, Australia, New Zealand? (Score:1, Insightful)
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The international growth page shows everything else (there is about 30 domains represented) - http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trafficvis/I nternationalGrowth.html [chrisharrison.net]
You would think... (Score:1)
No chance (Score:2)
Face it, we lost the porn sector long, long time ago.
Daft OP (Score:1)
This gives the absolutely false impression as if the number of websites in US, Asia and Europe are _falling_, when in fact it is simply the number of websites in other regions that is catching up.
Secondly, thanks for putting in title "Europe is ceding web dominance" and then telling that Eastern Europe is on rise, showing to whoever may care that EEU is
Piracy (Score:2)
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For the very same reason why crack and IP-ignoring sites spring up in Russia and its former other Soviet Republics: Police has better and more important things to handle first before trying to crack down on criminals that don't do any damage to the local commerce.
Then again, if they did actually bother finding them, I'd prolly be down a job.
misleading (Score:1)
during the early stage of the development, there will be multiple players, but as time goes on, we usually see a convergence. however, that does not necessarily mean a decline of the development. altough there is no boundary on the net, the web sites in north america, europe, and asia mainly focus on and serve their own market. so a growth in one region won't direclty lead to a decline in another. the conclusion about china als
Stupid summary, rubbish 'study' (Score:2)
No it's not, the % of total traffic that goes to these countries is declining. Harrison's page says nothing about the total amount of traffic over the period examined, so it's entirely possible that the absolute amount of traffic to these sites has risen.
Harrison's 'research', or at least the presentation thereof, stinks. He's playing with percentages to make the change seem more dramatic. T
Before we go too far with this ... (Score:2)
Rebuttle: Web Dominance, Traffic, top 500? (Score:3, Informative)
"It should be noted that these trends are only based on the rank of top 500 most visited websites. While providing a good snapshot of web activity, the data does not necessarily scale to the entire web. However, it does provide a reliable measure for sites that are utilized by a broad spectrum of the population, such as search engines or news providers. These, in turn, provide a fairly accurate measure of how connected a country is.
Also, this analysis is only looking at rank movement and not web traffic. This was purposeful. Web dominance is an effect of top sites jostling - these are the big players that can exert the most political and social influence. The pure number of websites is less interesting, as it is more of an effect of the economy (i.e. when money is flowing, people setup websites for personal and small business use). Additionally, indications are that traffic is growing across the board. Thus, the trends noted here are most likely from new countries growing faster than old players."
Basically, it doesn't matter how many websites you have, it's how many important websites you have. If the US, Asia and Western Europe loose their dominance in the top 500, they will have no leg to stand on when trying to wrangle the internet and its politics. You can already see the international community starting to put pressure on the US to open the net. It is clear that pressure is only going to increase as US dominance erodes.
Also, I want to reiterate how fast this is happening. In July 2004, US, Asian, and Western European domains controlled 96% of 500 top websites! By January 2007 (just two and a half years later), that number has dropped to below 80%. And, this trend seems to be accelerating.
Chris Harrison
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However, more important than the fall of
Shocking? (Score:1)
Research is Flawed (Score:1)