Microsoft

Is there really that much diversity on the internet?

7th July 2012 8 Replies Christopher Roberts

The internet is big right? Okay it is massive. With that massiveness one naturally associates extreme diversity. Don’t get me wrong, across the entire internet, there is amazing variation, with billions of people adding their spin to the net.

What I am going to investigate in this post though is how diverse the ‘main’ internet is. What I mean by that is the internet that we use every day. How diverse is the most regularly used/visited content? Is there really as much choice as we think, or is the majority of the internet dominated by a few firms?

In order to go about this research I am going to use Alexa, who gather statistics on websites traffic. For most sites, the data isn’t that accurate, however for really busy sites, the numbers are so great, the reliability of the data is much higher, hence why I can use it.

Google

According to Alexa, Google.com is the most visited site on the web. How could it not be? Alexa estimates that 50% of all internet users visited Google.com in the last three months. Second on the list for most visited sites is Facebook, which is trailing with just 45% of internet users visiting the site.

Remember however that is just Google.com, Google has a massive monopoly over the internet. In the 100 most visited sites on the web, 18 of the sites are owned by Google – 16 localised sites, Google.com and GoogleUserContent.com (the site you see when there is an error finding/displaying a page).

Google undoubtedly has reduced diversity on the internet, having such a monopoly on the sites we all visit. The thing is, it isn’t just 18 sites. Google also owns YouTube and (the third most visited site on the net) Blogspot which is ranked 10th, Blogger at 47 (Blogger and Blogspot are now one) and Blogspot.in (India) ranked 73. That means 21 of the most visited sites on the net belong to Google, meaning it owns more than one fifth of the ‘main’ internet.

Google’s dominance on the web suggests that a lot of us are Googlites!

Can you call the internet diverse, when in the top one hundred sites, one firm owns more than a fifth of all sites? Maybe, what does the rest of the field look like?

Unsurprisingly, the company that is arguable Google’s main rival is in second place. Yahoo and Microsoft are currently in a ‘Search Alliance’ therefore restricting competition, so I am going to count them in the list of sites that Microsoft owns/influences. Here is the list of sites that Microsoft owns/influences which are top 100 websites:

Yahoo.com – Ranked 3rd
Live.com – Ranked 7th
Yahoo.co.jp – Ranked 16th
MSN.com – Ranked 17th
Bing.com – Ranked 29th
Microsoft.com – Ranked 30th – ironic how it is lower many of the other sites it owns!
Flickr.com – Ranked 53rd and Yahoo owned

Therefore Microsoft own/influence 7 of the top 100 sites. Add that to Google’s 21, and 28 of the top sites on the net are owned by two firms. More than a quarter.

I am starting to think the ‘main’ internet is not as diverse as one may first assume.

Amazon

Next on the list of internet giants comes Amazon. Amazon.com is ranked 10th, whilst Amazon Germany (Amazon.de) is ranked 91st and Amazon Japan (Amazon.co.jp) is 95th. Amazon also owns the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) which is the 50th most visited site. Amazon owns 4 of the top 100 sites.

32 sites gone.

Alibaba Group

The Alibaba Group is a privately owned Chinese business, which owns Alibaba.com, Tmall (tmall.com), Taobao (Taobao.com) and Sogou.com. The group therefore account for four of the sites that make up what I am calling the ‘main internet’.

36 sites taken by just 4 companies. How diverse is our internet?

eBay

Next we come to eBay.com which sits 23rd on the list of top 100 sites. eBay International AG (ebay.de) is in 80th place, followed by eBay UK (ebay.co.uk) in 86th. eBay also owns PayPal (paypal.com) which is ranked 46th.

eBay steals another 4 sites, leaving just 60 of our hundred left, and so far only 5 firms are involved.

Time Warner

CNN (cnn.com) AOL (aol.co.uk) and The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) are all sites owned by Time Warner. Time Warner is the sixth business involved now, leaving just 57 sites.

WordPress

The blogging platform WordPress (wordpress.com) is ranked 19th, and its brother, which allows users to host the content management system on their own site (wordpress.org) is ranked 83rd.

There goes another two sites, meaning just 55 left, and only seven players so far.

Twitter

Ranked number 8 on the list is Twitter, however its URL shortener (t.co) is ranked 31st, meaning Twitter is also one of the big players in the top 100 sites, arguably with some form of domination over the internet.

47 sites of the top 100 accounted for and a mere eight organisations involved.

The Rest

Of the final 53 sites, 5 are adult only sites leaving 48 sites – although many of these either are a part of, or are a much bigger group.

Some familiar faces appear in the other 48 sites, Facebook (2nd), Wikipedia (6th), LinkedIn (11th), Apple (34th), Tumblr (37th), Pinterest (47th), BBC Online (48th), Ask (54th), AVG (62nd), Adobe Systems Incorporated (67th), About.com (81st), ESPN (82nd), Go Daddy (85th), Netflix (89th), The Pirate Bay (92nd) and CNET (97th).

Remove these very well known, well established, and massive brands, and we are left with 32 sites – less than a third. Of the remaining sites, around half are Chinese, showing the growing influence and usage of the internet in China.

My Verdict

In this post I have established that of the sites we visit most regularly, 47 are owned by just eight organisations. Does that really represent the freedom that we all believe the internet offers?

I was surprised by the type of content, and the limited number of different sites that there are in the global top 100. It would seem that the most visited sites consist of search engines, social media sites and news websites. Interesting statistics.

So, what is your verdict on how diverse the internet we use everyday is? I personally am not quite as convinced as I was before writing this article that the internet is quite as free and diverse as we all believe.

Please note these rankings are changing all the time, and all content was correct according to Alexa.com at the time of writing – the 6th of July 2012.

How the USB revolutionised computing

6th July 2012 6 Replies Christopher Roberts

This is a sponsored post. To find out more about sponsored content on Technology Bloggers, please visit our Privacy Policy.

The Universal Serial Bus, or as it is now commonly referred to as the USB, is a port designed to provide power supply or share data between electronic devices.

Ask someone to think about a USB, most people will naturally assume you are talking about a memory stick, which in essence is a super small, lightweight portable hard disk. However don’t confuse a USB port (the holding device) with a USB flash drive (a memory stick).

The USB (both port and flash drive) is something most of us take for granted in modern times, so I thought in this post it would be interesting to look at some of the uses for USBs, and how the USB has evolved over time.

USB 1.0

Design prototyping for the USB began when computing was still in its infancy, way back 18 years ago in 1994. At the time the port was being developed by the big players in the computing industry – Microsoft, Compaq, Intel, IBM, etc. These companies realised that there was (at the time) no easy medium which allowed communication through computers. For the computer to evolve, the companies realised that this would be an integral part of the system, as if you cannot share data, options are limited. Do remember this was happening in times before the internet was the global phenomenon it is today.

The first USB was produced in 1995 by Intel. Computers of the time started to come fitted with one or two USB 1.0 ports – although looking back, relatively few PCs were ever released with USB 1.0 ports. Nowadays, USB ports are in most cases a necessity for keyboard and mouse input devices.

The USB 1.0 was a revolutionary product, however looking back, its functionality was limited. Its maximum data transfer speed was 12 megabits per second. Relatively slow. That said, back when it was first introduced, a computers internal hard drive was typically only sized around 256/1024 mb (1/4 of a gigabyte to one gigabyte).

USB 2.0

In late 2000, the USB flash drive was released, enabling users to store more data than ever before, by storing things external to their computer. It would be an understatement to say that the USB flash drive was a step up from the floppy disk – it was more of a leap up! Initially, most USBs were typically 8 megabytes in size, meaning that they could hold more than five times what a floppy disk could.

Earlier in the year, the USB 2.0 was released, meaning that data transfer could happen 40 times faster, at 480 megabits per second. Initially some flash drives were designed for 1.0, however soon they were all being designed for the new 2.0 port, due to the increased possibilities.

USB 3.0

In 2008, the currently less well known USB 3.0 was released, which is more than ten times faster than its 2.0 brother.

USB flash drives have also improved over the years, and it is now possible to get a USB flash drive that is 256 gigabytes – one quarter of a terabyte. These disks are bigger than most computer hard drives were just a few years ago, showing the extent of the upgrades this technology has undergone.

A 256 gigabyte memory stick would though be useless with a USB 1.0 port as filling it would take almost 2 days (1.98 days) due to the speed of the data transfer. Even with a USB 2.0 port, the data transfer would take almost 72 minutes – more than an hour. Modern USB 3.0 ports could have the job done in less than 7 minutes. That really shows the true scale or achievement and advancement made in the USB industry.

Modern Uses

The USB is a crucial component of the modern PC, and is also very important for other devices. It is now possible to power many smartphones and multimedia devices via USB, either through a plug or your computer.

Some people use USB sticks to carry around a portable operating system with them, as it is perfectly possible to load Windows 7 onto a 16 gb memory stick and carry it around with you.

The USB itself is a very flexible (not literally, the board would probably snap were you to bend it) device, with a lot of room for aesthetic variation. You can now get a range of Promotional USB Sticks, which many organisations often utilise, choosing to offer branded USBs as promotional gifts. This is all thanks to the readily available technology and cheap price of the components involved.

USBs now come shaped as credit cards, keys, pens, robots, people and even wine bottles!

Do you have any funky USB flash drives at home? How about USB ports, have you counted how many your PC has? Comments and feedback below as always 🙂

Apple and some bad press

10th May 2012 13 Replies Jonny Hankins

This week I would just like to do a short follow up on Christopher’s article entitled Why do we stick by Google and Apple but not Microsoft?

I will start with a little story about my 6 year old boy. He loves making things and last week he made a laptop computer from cardboard. It has keys with letters on it, a mouse and a black screen with icons. When it was finished he showed it to me, pointing out the detail, and said “I am not going to put the apple here on the top though, because they don’t all have apples”.

This is the power of branding. In a few years when he wants a laptop of his own what will he want? The one with the apple?

My kind of branding

Recently though here in the US I have met a few people that do not use Apple products in principle. The reason I think is the bad press that their working practices have received in US newspapers.

I am not in any way endorsing these reports, but I feel that they are worthy of analyzing in a bit of detail, both for their content and their political or ethical standpoint.

The New York Times ran an entire series in which it looked at the human costs of the iPad and apple revolution, and you can read it here (not too long).

The opening lines speak of an explosion in which 2 people were killed as they polished iPad cases. This is not the only reported explosion either, and there are plenty of cases of people being burnt as they use chemicals without proper safety procedures, excessively long days spent entirely stood up and child labour.

It is not just Apple though that use these manufacturing plants however, and the scale of the operations is incredible. One of the names often cited for criticism is Foxconn, and they do a lot of Apple’s assembly. They have 1.2 million employees in China, some plants have more than 100 000 workers, they operate 24 hours a day, can call upon their work force at any time and start production within minutes of receiving orders. This is what the technology of today requires and produces.

Apple do have a code of conduct within its supply chain, drawn up and expanded upon since 2005. Audits are conducted and violations unearthed and they say that this is a sign of their commitments to improvement, but some say that the fact that they problem is continuous points to a toleration of non compliance.

Last year they found 4 deaths and 77 injuries within their production system, and several suicides. Now one death or injury is too many, but with a workforce of well over a million accidents will happen, and some might even see this as a good record. Apple state that they train their workforce and explain their rights to them.

One thing is for sure, the stakes are high and there is a lot of money to be made but Apple is a demanding company. And they are not the only ones with dodgy working practices, but seem to be singled out for criticism.

Why might that be I wonder? Maybe it is because as Christopher hinted they inspire such loyalty amongst their users, and some circles do not like that.

Technology Bloggers

Championing responsible innovation in partnership with the Bassetti Foundation