As of March 2025, Google represented 79.1 percent of the global online search engine market on desktop devices. Despite being much ahead of its competitors, this represents the lowest share ever recorded by the search engine in these devices for over two decades. Meanwhile, its long-time competitor Bing accounted for 12.21 percent, as tools like Yahoo and Yandex held shares of over 2.9 percent each. Google and the global search market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2024, with a market capitalization of 2.02 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2024 with roughly 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users represented little over 33 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong decrease in the percentage of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. By the end of 2024, nearly half of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 21 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo.

As of 2024, the estimated number of internet users worldwide was 5.5 billion, up from 5.3 billion in the previous year. This share represents 68 percent of the global population. Internet access around the world Easier access to computers, the modernization of countries worldwide, and increased utilization of smartphones have allowed people to use the internet more frequently and conveniently. However, internet penetration often pertains to the current state of development regarding communications networks. As of January 2023, there were approximately 1.05 billion total internet users in China and 692 million total internet users in the United States. Online activities Social networking is one of the most popular online activities worldwide, and Facebook is the most popular online network based on active usage. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, there were over 3.07 billion monthly active Facebook users, accounting for well more than half of the internet users worldwide. Connecting with family and friends, expressing opinions, entertainment, and online shopping are amongst the most popular reasons for internet usage.

As of February 2025, 5.56 billion individuals worldwide were internet users, which amounted to 67.9 percent of the global population. Of this total, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent of the world's population, were social media users. Global internet usage Connecting billions of people worldwide, the internet is a core pillar of the modern information society. Northern Europe ranked first among worldwide regions by the share of the population using the internet in 20254. In The Netherlands, Norway and Saudi Arabia, 99 percent of the population used the internet as of February 2025. North Korea was at the opposite end of the spectrum, with virtually no internet usage penetration among the general population, ranking last worldwide. Eastern Asia was home to the largest number of online users worldwide – over 1.34 billion at the latest count. Southern Asia ranked second, with around 1.2 billion internet users. China, India, and the United States rank ahead of other countries worldwide by the number of internet users. Worldwide internet user demographics As of 2024, the share of female internet users worldwide was 65 percent, five percent less than that of men. Gender disparity in internet usage was bigger in African countries, with around a ten percent difference. Worldwide regions, like the Commonwealth of Independent States and Europe, showed a smaller usage gap between these two genders. As of 2024, global internet usage was higher among individuals between 15 and 24 years old across all regions, with young people in Europe representing the most significant usage penetration, 98 percent. In comparison, the worldwide average for the age group 15–24 years was 79 percent. The income level of the countries was also an essential factor for internet access, as 93 percent of the population of the countries with high income reportedly used the internet, as opposed to only 27 percent of the low-income markets.

In 2024, "Google" was the most popular search query on Google. "You" ranked second, scoring an index value of 79 points. "YouTube" ranked third with an index value of 76 points relative to the top query, while "Facebook" ranked fifth, with an index value of 62.

Despite the growth and prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps, e-mail is an integral part of daily online life. In 2023, the number of global e-mail users amounted to **** billion and is set to grow to **** billion users in 2027. Global e-mail audiencesIn 2023, approximately *** billion e-mails were sent and received every day worldwide. This figure is projected to increase to over *** billion daily e-mails in 2027. As of July 2022, Apple Mail Privacy accounted for over half of the e-mail opens, while mobile use of e-mails saw a significant decrease in their market shares. Apple MPP e-mail app was the most popular e-mail client, accounting for ** percent of e-mail opens. Gmail, the free e-mail service owned by Google, was ranked second with a ** percent open share. Malicious mailMany online users use e-mails for website and newsletter signups and brace themselves for the inevitable flood of spam and marketing communications. Whereas most unwanted e-mails are annoying yet ultimately benign, consumers are right to be wary of malicious e-mail that can be used to compromise their digital accounts and devices. In 2023, ** percent of fraud reports in the United States related to cases in which victims were contacted via e-mail.

As of March 2025, Google continued to dominate the global search engine industry by far, with an 89.62 percent market share. However, this stronghold may be showing signs of erosion, with its share across all devices dipping to its lowest point in over two decades. Bing, Google's closest competitor, currently holds a market share of 4.01 percent across, while Russia-based Yandex hikes to the third place with a share of around 2.51 percent. Competitive landscape and regional variations While Google's overall dominance persists, other search engines carve out niches in various markets and platforms. Bing holds a 12.21 percent market share across desktop devices worldwide, as Yandex and Baidu have found success inside and outside of their home markets. Yandex is used by over 63 percent of Russian internet users, but Baidu has seen its market share significantly in China As regional variations highlight the importance of local players in challenging Google's global supremacy, the company is likely to face more challenges with the AI-powered online search trend and increasing regulatory scrutiny. Search behavior and antitrust concerns Despite facing more competition, Google remains deeply ingrained in users' online habits. In 2024, "Google" itself was the most popular search query on its own platform, followed by "YouTube" - another Google-owned property. This self-reinforcing ecosystem has drawn scrutiny from regulators, with the European Commission imposing millionaire antitrust fines on the company. As its influence extends beyond search into various online services, the company's market position continues to be a subject of debate among industry watchdogs and authorities worldwide.

Google is not only popular in its home country, but is also the dominant internet search provider in many major online markets, frequently generating between ** and ** percent of desktop search traffic. The search engine giant has a market share of over ** percent in India and accounted for the majority of the global search engine market, way ahead of other competitors such as Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Google’s online dominance All roads lead to Rome, or if you are browsing the internet, all roads lead to Google. It is hard to imagine an online experience without the online behemoth, as the company offers a wide range of online products and services that all seamlessly integrate with each other. Google search and advertising are the core products of the company, accounting for the vast majority of the company revenues. When adding this up with the Chrome browser, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google’s ownership of the Android mobile operating system, and various other consumer and enterprise services, Google is basically a one-stop shop for online needs. Google anti-trust rulings However, Google’s dominance of the search market is not always welcome and is keenly watched by authorities and industry watchdogs – since 2017, the EU commission has fined Google over ***** billion euros in antitrust fines for abusing its monopoly in online advertising. In March 2019, European Commission found that Google violated antitrust regulations by imposing contractual restrictions on third-party websites in order to make them less competitive and fined the company *** billion euros.

In January 2025, Google accounted for 93.89 percent of the global mobile search engine market worldwide. Ever since the release of Google Search in 1997, the company's search engine has dominated the search engine market, maintaining a margin of more than 93 percentage points since January 2015. Currently owned by the parent corporation Alphabet Inc., Google has one of the highest tech company revenues, with roughly 305.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

Between January and March 2021, the most searched Google keyword on YouTube.com was "youtube," with close to *** million average monthly searches. The second leading keyword was "youtube to mp3," which is usually used by people to look for software to download music as mp3 files from videos hosted on the platform. Users also tried to reach YouTube TV, a live and on-demand video streaming service available in the United States, with the query "youtube tv" amassing almost *** million average monthly searches in the examined period.

In May 2025, the United States was responsible for 21.1 percent of the traffic to Google.com. In terms of web visits to the search platform, Japan came in second with 6.46 percent, followed by Brazil and India with 5.58 and 4.76 percent, respectively.

In February 2025, Verizon Media processed **** million online search queries in the United States, and market leader Google processed over **** million search queries. In total, Google accounted for ** percent of the U.S. desktop search queries. Google was also the leading mobile search provider in the United States, accounting for around ** percent of the market as of March 2024.

With roughly three billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide. The platform surpassed two billion active users in the second quarter of 2017, taking just over 13 years to reach this milestone. In comparison, Meta-owned Instagram took 11.2 years, and Google’s YouTube took just over 14 years to achieve this landmark. As of January 2022, Facebook’s leading audience base was in India, with almost 330 million users whilst the United States ranked second with an approximate total of 179 million users. The platform also finds remarkable popularity in Indonesia and Brazil. Social Media usage in the United States In January 2021, Facebook was the platform on which users in the United States spent the most time per day. The average time spent on Facebook was 33 minutes, followed by TikTok with 32 minutes and Twitter with 31 daily minutes. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, all major social media platforms saw an increase in daily usage, which then either plateaued or decreased in 2021. At the end of 2021, over a quarter of all Facebook users in the United States belonged to the 25 to 34 year age group and 18.2 percent of users were in the 35 to 44 year age group. In general, Facebook users were more likely to be female. Meta Platforms Meta is Facebook’s recently renamed parent company and had a grand total of 3.59 billion core product users by the final quarter of 2021. Other Meta products include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus – Meta’s virtual reality subsidiary which produces VR headsets. In 2021, Meta's revenue amounted to 117 billion US dollars, up from around 86 billion U.S. dollars in the previous financial year.

In 2021, there were 1.21 billion monthly active users of Meta's Instagram, making up over 28 percent of the world's internet users. By 2025, it has been forecast that there will be 1.44 billion monthly active users of the social media platform, which would account for 31.2 percent of global internet users.

How popular is Instagram?

Instagram, as of January 2022, was the fourth most popular social media platform in the world in terms of user numbers. YouTube and WhatsApp ranked in second and third place, respectively, whilst Facebook remained the most popular, with almost three billion monthly active users worldwide.

India had the largest number of Instagram users as of January 2022, with a total of over 230 million users in the country. The second-largest Instagram audience could be found in the United States, with almost 160 million people subscribing to the photo and video sharing app.

Gen Z and Instagram

As of September 2021, Gen Z users in the United States spent an average of five hours per week on Instagram. Although Instagram ranked third in terms of hours per week spent on the platform, Gen Z users spent considerably more time on TikTok, amounting to a weekly average of over 10 hours being spent on the mobile-first video app.

Most followed accounts on Instagram

As of May 2022, Instagram’s own account had 504.37 million followers. In terms of celebrities, Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@chistiano) had over 440.41 million followers on the social network. Moreover, the average media value of an Instagram post by Ronaldo was over 985,000 U.S. dollars.

The most liked post on Instagram as of May 2022 was Photo of an Egg, which was posted in 2019 by the account @world_record_egg. Photo of an Egg has not only exceeded 55 million likes on the platform, but it also has nearly 3.5 million comments, and the account itself has over 4.5 million Instagram followers. After mysterious posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself as part of a mental health campaign aimed at the difficulties and demands of using social media.

The global number of smartphone users in was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 1.8 billion users (+42.62 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the smartphone user base is estimated to reach 6.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of smartphone users of was continuously increasing over the past years.Smartphone users here are limited to internet users of any age using a smartphone. The shown figures have been derived from survey data that has been processed to estimate missing demographics.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).Find more key insights for the number of smartphone users in countries like Australia & Oceania and Asia.

In the second half of 2023, Google received more than 216 thousand requests for disclosure of user information from federal agencies and governments worldwide. In the same period, the number of accounts subject to those requests was approximately 441 thousand.

In 2022, Wordle was the most popular Google search in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain. By contrast, in Germany and Italy, Ukraine was the most popular search on Google. In Brazil, Google users were interested the most in the 2022 elections.

Wordle!

Launched in October 2021 and purchased by the New York Times in January 2022, Wordle is an online game where players can play only once a day and have to guess a five-letter word in six tries. The game became an instant hit, with a surge of daily users at the beginning of the year. For instance, it was one of the most popular iPhone apps in the United States, being played mostly by millennials. Also in the United Kingdom, the game gained in popularity, with most players using the app every day.

Google search

As the leading search engine in many countries, Google is the most visited multi-platform web property. Indeed, most of Google's revenues come from Google properties, which include the search platform, the traffic generated by search distribution partners using Google.com as their default search in browsers, and the advertising on its own sites.

As of June 2024, global searches for the keyword "generative AI" had experienced an increase in the previous year. The search terms for generative artificial intelligence surged in popularity from mid-February to early March 2024, hitting a score of 100 index points in the week ending March 3. Interest in "generative AI" frequently coincides with searches for ChatGPT, an AI chatbot model developed by the United States-based research company OpenAI.

As of June 2024, global Google searches for the word "ChatGPT" increased again after a slight decline by the end of 2024. Interest in the chatbot, developed by the U.S.-based OpenAI and launched in November 2022, started rising in the week ending December 3, 2022. Recently, growing demand for information on ChatGPT made the keyword hit a peak of 100 index points during the week ending on June 2, 2024. ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a chatbot and AI-powered auto-generative text system able to give human-sounding replies and reproduce human-like interactions when prompted.

As of February 2025, it was found that men between the ages of 25 and 34 years made up Facebook's largest audience, accounting for 18.5 percent of global users. Additionally, Facebook's second-largest audience base could be found with men aged 18 to 24 years. Facebook connects the world Founded in 2004 and going public in 2012, Facebook is one of the biggest internet companies in the world with influence that goes beyond social media. It is widely considered as one of the Big Four tech companies, along with Google, Apple, and Amazon (all together known under the acronym GAFA). Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide and the company also owns three other billion-user properties: mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, as well as photo-sharing app Instagram. Facebook usersThe vast majority of Facebook users connect to the social network via mobile devices. This is unsurprising, as Facebook has many users in mobile-first online markets. Currently, India ranks first in terms of Facebook audience size with 378 million users. The United States, Brazil, and Indonesia also all have more than 100 million Facebook users each.

Google Pay was used more often for in-store payments in both India and Poland than in either the United States or the UK in 2024. This reveals itself when comparing two questions from Statista's Consumer Insights as ** out of 100 consumers from India replied they had used Google Pay. India ranks within the top three of countries in the world with the highest penetration of proximity mobile payments.

How many people use Google Pay?

Google's mother company Alphabet does not share user figures of Google Pay. This is because the company does not charge transaction fees, except in the United States when clients transfer money from a Google Pay account to a bank account with a debit card. A 2022 forecast predicted the number of Google Pay users in the United States would grow by more than *** million between 2022 and 2026. This prediction was from before May 2022, however. That month, Google announced it would replace Google Pay altogether with a resurrected Google Wallet app in ** countries across the world, except the U.S., Singapore, and India.

Google Pay used more often on websites outside the United States Website tracking focusing on payment technologies indicates Google Pay is used more often on websites from Canada, New Zealand or Ireland than on U.S. websites or platforms from Europe. Nearly **** percent of merchants in Italy with at least one Payment Acceptance or Payment Processor technology up to August 2023 had Google Pay on their website. Websites from India ranked relatively low in this list, potentially indicating Google Pay is either used more as an offline payment method or that Google Pay is integrated within UPI in the country.