eMarketer recently published worlwide numbers for internet usage and penetration. Though the usual suspects remain in the top spots - US, Japan, Korea, UK, France, Scandinavia - the most interesting insight is the rise of emerging markets in the rankings. China is expected to become the largest internet market by the end of the year - as it already is for mobile telecommunications. Brazil and Mexico numbers confirm an active internet base in Latin America - just in case you haven't been on Orkut recently. India is also expected to grow exponentially - as is currently the case for mobile - and should get in the top 5 fairly soon.

It will be interesting to see how this change of user demographics will impact the internet, its format, content and language - fair to say that so far it is a mainly Western English thing.