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Internet Users 1990

Map No. 335

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In 1990 the Internet had existed for only 7 years; just 3 million people had access to it worldwide. 73% of these people were living in the United States, 15% were in Western Europe

Internet users in 1990 were recorded in just a few other territories. Outside Western Europe and the United States, most users lived in Canada, followed by Australia, then Japan, the Republic of Korea and Israel. In 1990 there was practically no access elsewhere.

Switzerland is home to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) where the World Wide Web was developed. In 1990, 5.8 people per thousand in Switzerland used the Internet.

"I sit down comfortably in the university’s modern computer lab and take advantage of the technology available to enter the digital world. The digital world!" Gabriela Tôrres Barbosa, 2006

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide Internet users who lived there in 1990.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page