Mathieu_Bonnet - 2:49 pm on Jul 3, 2008 (gmt 0)

Am I the only one to think this would be a good chance to estimate the number of active Internet users, by comparing the current number of downloads, with the usage share on some representative websites, on the same day? (I mean, the number of Internet users, which connected to the Internet, since the release of Firefox 3... that is, the number of users you can expect to connect to the Internet, in a matter of two weeks and a half... -of course, it depends on the period of the year, but it is still interesting).

[downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com...] shows about 29,400,000 downloads... Let's take the 4% figure, quoted in the above linked site... it means there would be about 735,000,000 active Internet users. If we take, like, 1,200,000,000 total Internet users (1,018,057,389 in 2005, from the CIA Factbook), it means there would be about 61% of active Internet users, among all the Internet users.

If we take the number of 6,678,000,000 people on Earth (july 2008 estimate, again, from the CIA Factbook), it means there are, on Earth, about 11% of active Internet users.

(I hope I didn't make any mistake, now...).

[edited by: Mathieu_Bonnet at 3:02 pm (utc) on July 3, 2008]