Saturday, November 14, 2009

Who uses more Internet?

Firstly, sorry for the long absence. Didn't realize how quickly the weeks went. I will be off to Sweden (Uppsala University) tomorrow for 4 days.

Anyways, here is the reason for the post. I just read on the Google Blog today that the World Bank has opened up its data APIs, and since you know how I love debate based on facts rather than guesses, I figured I'll give it a spin.

And here is some interesting data for you all to see
[Internet accessibility per capita, USA, World, Pakistan, and India]



You can play with this data yourself here.

So, what say?

9 comments:

  1. OMG! I just got back and you're leaving!!!! Have a great time and stay WARM~~~ Leese

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  2. Anupam7:37 AM

    Only 20% of the people of the world access the internet. Rest 80% dont use it - primarily because they are illiterate or cannot afford a computer.

    Spoken Web at IBM is about bringing information for them on Voice on normal mobile phones.

    http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/arun_kumar.WWTW.html

    In India, about 5% of the people use internet but more than 50% have mobile phones (and growing fast)

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  3. I say..sure India is below the US but the US isn't dominant by far :) http://bitly/4eXT though shdn't we be? ;)

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  4. I had to check on France which was around 48%. Canada was a couple of percentage points higher than the US.
    @bdev - your link doesn't work

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  5. @Leese: I am back now :)
    @Anupam: I agree about the phone internet thing. In fact, I am keen to see what the graph looks like in 2009 and 2010.

    @bdev: Define the rationale behind "should" :)

    @starman: Try http://bit.ly/4eXT.

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  6. @animesh. cuz clearly we're the best ;)

    @starman sorry about that..how about this: bit.ly/404fik

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  7. Pankaj Yadav1:24 PM

    Ever thought that Internet Or Computer is not really a personal thing for lot of Indians, especially Indian families, where 2-6 members share 1-2 computers.
    I will take that data with a pinch of salt.

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  8. Pankaj: You have a point, but the same is true even in the US and Europe (the "home internet connection" is a shared resource). And I am sure that the survey question would not have been "do you have a PC?".

    I would like to think that the data was collected by a survey using questions such as "do you have access to the internet?". But then, I could not find the details on the exact method used.

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  9. @bdev - the new link worked fine. I found it quite interesting that there are so many countries ahead of the US.

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