Search giant Google is now the largest source of global internet traffic, accounting for a 6% share according to Arbor Networks' 2009 Internet Observatory Report.

 

Created in conjunction with the University of Michigan and Merrit Network, the report looked at 256 exabytes of internet traffic over 2 years. Closely mirroring the mergers of corporate media companies in the last few years, the internet has become the domain (pardon the pun!) of giants.

 

Where five years ago, Internet traffic was distributed proportionally among tens of thousands of networks, today 100 networks from over 35,000 contribute 60% of all internet traffic.

 

"The Internet is a lot flatter today, more densely connected." Danny McPherson, VP and CSO of Arbor Networks noted when commenting on the findings.

 

The report also notes that somewhere between 25% and 40% of Web (HTTP) traffic (which makes up 52% of all internet traffic) is video. Arbor suggest that this is due to the clear shift in users preference from P2P file sharing, to the instant gratification provided by on-demand streaming sites such as YouTube.

 

It will come as no surprise then to hear that YouTube has now reached the 1 billion views per day milestone. That's right, 1 BILLION views per day, or at least 11,574 views per second, 694,444 views per minute, 41,666,667 views per hour...