Who Doesn't Use the Web?

US consumers generally enjoy widespread Internet access. While the Web was once the playground of affluent early adopters, the demographic profile of the US Internet user now resembles that of most Americans.

Nonetheless, about one-quarter of Americans have no Internet access, according to a wide-ranging report titled "Information Searches That Solve Problems: How People Use the Internet, Libraries and Government Agencies When They Need Help" by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

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Baidu leads China Web search market in Q4

Baidu.com Inc led China's search engine market in last year's fourth quarter with a 60.1 percent share, research firm Analysys International said on Friday.

Google Inc came second with a 25.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6 percent, it said in a statement. Read more....

China's Online Population Explosion

There are now an estimated 137 million Internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current Internet population range from 165 million to 210 million. The growth rate of China's internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years.

The influx of tens of millions of new online participants each year can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for the people of China, for its government and economy, and for the larger world. At the very least, the Internet will offer ever greater numbers of Chinese a much more sophisticated information and communications world than the one they currently inhabit. And because the Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues, it could have a unifying effect on the country's widely dispersed citizenry.

Read more from the Pew Research Center Web site on the size and direction of growth of China's online population.

Internet Activities Survey Results

According to a February-March 2007 survey, 71% of American adults use the internet.

Here are some of the things they do online:
Send or read email : 91%
Use a search engine to find information: 91%
Search for a map or driving directions: 86%
Look for info on a hobby or interest: 83%
Look for health/medical info: 80%
Research a product or service before buying it: 78%
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Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 – February-March 2007).