According to a Netcraft Web Server Survey, as of December 2009, there were more than 233 million websites available on the Internet. This compares to about 30 million websites in 2000, when the .com bubble burst. While many feared a shift away from the Internet for business purposes following the .com bubble, the past decade’s growth of the Internet has truly been phenomenal. We have seen an increase of more than 200 million websites in less than a decade.
Fourteen years ago in January 1996, there was less than 100,000 websites. There was hardly a need for Google. Google did not even exist until September 1998. If I had had the foresight to purchase domain names back then, I would be a wealthy man, but then I would not be writing this blog post.
Influential and popular websites such as Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Napster, Party Poker, My Space, You Tube, Blogger, Facebook and Twitter have had a huge impact on the growth of the Internet in a wide variety of ways. They helped compel an increasing number of people to get on and stay on the Internet. Internet growth has also been propelled by the improved technology and growth of mobile devices such as Blackberry and the Iphone.
How many websites there will be ten years from now in 2020 is anyone’s guess. As mobile technology improves and sites become more compelling, the number of websites will undoubtedly increase. When you consider all the global growth and increased number of users having the ability to get online, it is likely that by 2020, there will be more than a half a billion web sites.
This growth presents tremendous opportunities in domain registration, individual web hosting, business web hosting services, reselling web hosting, and for companies doing business on the web. This growth may also help level the playing field in terms of physically reaching customers. No longer does a retailer need expensive downtown or suburban mall space to effectively reach customers.
