The pie chart illustrates the proportions of people using different languages on the Internet in December 2001, while the table presents data on the growth of global Internet users between 1997 and 2001.
Overall, English was by far the most dominant language used online, accounting for a substantially larger share than any other language. In addition, the number of Internet users worldwide increased dramatically over the period shown.
In terms of language use, English represented 43% of all Internet users, which was almost five times higher than Japanese (8.9%) and Chinese (8.8%), the second and third most common languages respectively. German and Spanish followed, making up 6.8% and 6.5%. Smaller proportions were recorded for Korean (4.6%), Italian (3.8%) and French (3.3%). Portuguese and Dutch were the least used languages, at 2.6% and 2.1% respectively, while the remaining users were grouped under other languages.
Regarding Internet growth, the number of users rose sharply from just 76 million, or 1.8% of the world’s population, in November 1997 to 513 million (8.4%) by August 2001. The most rapid expansion occurred between 1999 and 2000, when usage almost doubled, highlighting the explosive global spread of the Internet during this period.