The internet has been around for decades, but it’s just as mysterious to many people as the day it was first set up. That being said, it’s only been in the last fifteen or twenty years; however, there are still a few facts and insights that you may not know about the internet. This can be true even if you’re part of one of the internet service providers and think you know everything possible about it.
Online Advertising Is Huge
According to the majority of reports, internet advertising is one of the biggest industries on the planet; most speculations putting digital advertising being worth hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide on a yearly basis. This has continued to grow over the past two decades, and it currently doesn’t show many signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Less Than Half Of Traffic Is Human
If you’ve used the internet, then you’ve come across a captcha, either one with hard to read text or images. Many people may wonder what this is actually for, and the short answer is to reduce spam traffic. This is because people take up about half the traffic on the internet and many websites need a way to filter this out.
100 Billion Emails Are Sent Daily
When it comes to communication, email has become huge over the past few decades and have become an integral part of many peoples’ daily lives. Because of that, over 100 billion emails are sent on a daily basis and is just as popular, if not more popular, than texting when it comes to many areas.
Greenland Has The Most Connected Population
While many of us may assume that everyone has an internet connection, this isn’t true; the vast majority of first world countries only have between 70% and 80% coverage. However, Greenland takes the cake with 92% internet connectivity.
The Internet Is Huge
While we all know that there’s a lot of information on the internet, but very few of us know how big it actually is. Having said that, some studies have suggested that there are over a trillion pages on the internet; however, this was just an estimate and may be much larger.
It Weighs The Same As An Egg
With all of the information on the internet, you’d think that it would take up a lot of space; because of that, you’d expect that it’d weigh a lot too. However, the reverse is true and may experts have suggested that all electrons that make up added together would only weigh about 50 grams; this is the same size as an average egg.
A Lot Of People Still Use Dial-Up
Dial-up was essentially the only way to connect to the internet for several years; however, many more recent inventions have made it a lot faster and easier. However, there’s still a significant amount of people who use dial-up, with AOL still having approximately 200,000 paying subscribers.
It Would Need A Lot Of Paper
With the amount of information on the internet, you’d be right in assuming that it would need a lot of paper to print off. Wikipedia along would need roughly 71 million A4 pages while it’s been suggested that the entire internet would need over 136 billion pages.
The ISS Has An Internet Connection
With between 70% and 80% of people having an internet connection, you’d be forgiven for being surprised that the International Space Station has internet access. It’s also pretty fast, as it’s been reported its average speed is faster than Australia’s.
It’s Older Than You Think
We mentioned earlier that the internet has become popular after the last two decades; however, it’s actually much older than that. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN so that he and his colleagues could communicate and share results quickly. With some improvements and adjustments, the internet as we know it was eventually released. Having said that, the version used by Berners-Lee and his colleagues over four decades ago was significantly different than it is now.
With all of that in mind, there’s a significant chance that there are a variety of things that you never knew about the internet. After all, it’s one of the biggest resources on the planet with an extreme amount of upkeep, maintenance, and history; it’s only natural that a few facts would slip through the cracks.