Introduction: The Multilingual Internet

Abstract

the world’s population now online is approaching an extraordinary one billion. Fifteen countries account for about 70 % of the total individuals online today. The United States has the largest single proportion online of any country, or 20 % of the total. This reflects not merely its relatively large population size and advanced technological infrastructure, but also the fact that the technology that makes the Internet possible was created in the 1960’s in the United States (O'Neill 1995; Hafner and Lyon 1996; Cringely 1998). According to one estimate, already by 2003 roughly two-thirds of all Internet users were non-native speakers of English (CyberAtlas, 2003). Thus, native speakers of English no longer dominate, as they did for many years. In only four