英语不再在互联网上居统治地位

For the first time in the history of the World Wide Web, native English speakers are no longer the dominant demographic group on the Internet, thanks to a surge of more than 100 million new Internet users in 2001, a report released today found.

The third annual “State of the Internet Report,” produced jointly by the U.S. Internet Council and International Technology & Trade Associates Inc., (ITTA) found the new users ?mainly from the South Pacific region ?helped shrink the share of native English speakers online to roughly 45 percent of the estimated total of 500 million Web users.

Within the United States, 59 percent of households have home Internet access, a 15 percent increase over last year.

The report also details significant progress in efforts to eradicate the so-called “digital divide” that persists along racial, gender and economic lines. Women now make up 52 percent of U.S. Internet users, and 51 percent of African-American households are online, a 35 percent growth over 2000 and only slightly below the 60 percent penetration rate among white households.

Outside the United States, however, the digital divide is still quite wide, primarily between countries in the northern and southern hemispheres, the report notes.