As per the report by Comscore, Global Internet audience surpassed 1 billion mark last month. China surpassed United States in internet usage and is now new world no. 1 in internet population.

The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the highest share of global Internet users at 41 percent, followed by Europe (28 percent share), North America (18 percent share), Latin-America (7 percent share), and the Middle East & Africa (5 percent share).

China represented the largest online audience in the world in December 2008 with 17.9 crore Internet users, representing nearly 17.8 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience, followed by the U.S. (16.2%), Japan (6.0%), Germany (3.7%) and the U.K. (3.6%).

Indian ranked in the 7th position with 3.2 crore online users. That means only 2.7% people are logging to net in India compared to 53.44% in the US, 13.47 China and 46.45 in Japan.

The most popular property in the world in December was Google Sites, with 77.7 crore visitors, followed by Microsoft Sites (64.7 crore visitors), Yahoo! Sites (56.2 crore visitors). Facebook.com, which has grown a dramatic 127-percent in the past year to 22.2 crore visitors, now ranks as the top social networking site worldwide and the seventh most popular property in the world.

It is a very pathetic conditon that only 2.7% our population goes online when world average is 14.8% and even countries like South Korea has an average online presense of 55%, especially when we are a major IT destination in the world and talk about India becoming a major economy in the next decade.

This is mainly due to the lack of support from Government. It is evident from the 3G spectrum allocation issue as it is still not sorted out. As commented by a major telecom chief Indian government is looking only the monetary benefits of the spectrum allocation. As he suggested government should think about the benefits it bring to the common people and country.