Global online population surpasses 1bn mark

23rd January 2009

More than one billion consumers around the world now use the internet, according to new statistics from comScore.

The research company revealed that the milestone was reached in December, with the Asia Pacific being home to the largest number of web users, followed by Europe, North America, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa.

When broken down by country, the figures showed that China had the biggest overall web population at almost 180 million internet users.

It was followed by the US (163.3 million), Japan (59.9 million), Germany (36.9 million) and the UK (36.6 million) in the rankings.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! had the most popular websites globally in 2008.

Magid Abraham, president and chief executive of comScore, said: "Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the internet."

This follows recent statistics from Netcraft suggesting that there are currently almost 185 million sites on the web.