AsiaMedia :: KOREA: Asians to drive internet evolution

AsiaMedia :: KOREA: Asians to drive internet evolution:

"Google Vice President predicts that Asian countries, with their Internet penetration rates, will dominate the Internet in the future, increasing Asian language, culture and content online

The Korea Herald Thursday,
October 18, 2007
By Lee Sun-young

Asians will drive the evolution of contents and applications on the internet, which is now dominated by English-speaking users, Google vice president Vinton Cerf said yesterday. 'The number of people using the internet will only increase in Asia, so will their languages, culture and contents on the network,' Cerf said in Seoul. China already has a huge number of users even though it still has a low penetration rate of around 12 percent. North America, which had one time the largest group of Internet users, has now slid to the No. 3 spot, he said. 'The contents will clearly change. And the style of interactions and the way of doing business on the internet are also going to change because of this influx of new user groups,' the American computer scientist said. Cerf, who is also vice president of U.S. search giant Google, is widely known as the 'founding father' of the internet for his key technical and managerial role in the creation of the TCP/IP protocol in the 1970s, on which internet communication is based. He was in Seoul to attend the World Knowledge Forum organized by Maeil Business Newspaper, a Korean business daily."