The provided pie chart illustrates the distribution of online language populations in December 2001, totaling 529 million users. The accompanying table details the growth of the internet user population in millions and as a percentage of the world population from November 1997 to August 2001.
Overall, the data clearly indicates English as the dominant language online in 2001, while the total number of internet users experienced a substantial increase over the four-year period.
In December 2001, English accounted for a significant 40% of all online users, making it by far the most widely used language. Chinese was the second most popular language, representing 8.9% of users, followed closely by Japanese at 8.2%. German and Spanish also had substantial shares, at 6.8% and 5.9% respectively. Other languages, including Korean (4.8%), Italian (4.1%), French (3.3%), Portuguese (2.6%), and Dutch (2.1%), each constituted smaller proportions of the online population. The remaining languages collectively made up 11.3%.
Turning to the growth in internet usage, the number of online users surged dramatically from 76 million in November 1997 to 513 million by August 2001. This represents an increase from 1.8% to 8.4% of the world’s population. Notable growth occurred between August 2000 and August 2001, with the user base expanding from 368 million to 513 million. Similarly, between September 1998 and August 1999, the number of users nearly doubled from 147 million to 195 million.