The Internet began as a university research project in 1969 and was funded by a military research organization. For the next 20 years the Internet and its predecessor, the ARPANET, existed mostly in obscurity. It was primarily a network for government and academic researchers during this timeframe. The defining event of the Internet happened in 1989 when the World Wide Web was proposed by Tim Berners-Lee. A year later the web became a reality when the first primitive web browser was implemented. The release of the Mosaic browser in 1993 and the Netscape browser in 1994 allowed millions of PCs already in use to quickly and inexpensively get on the Internet.

At the beginning of 1990, there were 1.1M Internet users worldwide and about 86% were in the U.S. In the 1990s the worldwide number of Internet user grew 246-fold to 276M for a compound annual growth rate of over 73%. At the beginning of 1990, the number of Internet hosts were approaching 200K and 92% were in the US At the end of the decade the number of Internet hosts reached nearly 70M.

The next table shows the growth of Internet users in the US and worldwide. The growth in the number of US Internet users is slowing due to the high level of penetration. The worldwide number will continue at strong growth rates due to low penetration levels in most regions. The following table summarizes the growth in US and worldwide Internet users over the last 15 years.

At the end of 1999 the US had nearly 111M Internet users. Between 1990 and 1995 the compound annual growth rate of US Internet users was over 73% and slowed to 41% between 1995 and 1999. From 1999 to 2005 the US Internet users will only grow by about 11% per year.

The worldwide number of Internet users zoomed from 2.1M at year-end 1990 to over 42M in 1995, which is a compound annual growth of nearly 82%. From 1995 to 1999 the annual growth rate slowed to 60% and is forecast to grow by 20% per year in the next six years.

Despite a tripling of worldwide Internet users between 1999 and 2005, the Internet user forecast may be conservative. If information/web appliances take off in a few years, the number of Internet users may surpass 1B by the end of 2005.

The next figure shows the growth of Internet users for the main regions of the world. Six regions and the US totals are listed in the bar graph. The projections show Asia Pacific will become the largest region with 242M Internet users in 2005 up from 61M in 1999. Western Europe with 224M Internet users will also top the 208M Internet users forecasted for the US The Middle East/Africa region will have the lowest number of Internet users at 34M in 2005, but showing strong growth from only 3M Internet users in 1999.

There are numerous factors that are driving the growth of the Internet. The key driving forces are summarized in the next table. The left column shows important factors that have been active recently and continue to add growth to the Internet. The right column lists the factors that are emerging and are likely to have a strong impact in a few years.