Russian Users Are Now One Tenth of All European Internet Population and Huge Fans of Firefox

It is very interesting to witness any development, especially when it happens very rapidly and changes something important in one’s life. I can definitely tell you that growth of internet population in Russia is very visible and hardly left anyone unconcerned. There are very curious examples that are visible everywhere with people getting online for all sorts of strange reasons – and increasing the internet audience of the country to the level where it now gets to 10% of the entire European internet population.

For example, my cousin who never attended any computer literacy courses and works in a bakery where she never uses a computer either, recently purchased an entry-level laptop and gave me a call to ask how and where she should now connect to the internet – and if she should first install some programs like anti-virus software or something. The only reason for her to spend a pretty noticeable amount (and her bakery wages are definitely not huge) was to have an opportunity to communicate to some family members in a distant region using the widely popular local social network Odnoklassniki where they could use IM and even share photos. Like the investment in a laptop could not cover lengthy hours of long-distance calls for a few years!

Another hilarious example that I have witnessed recently was when I met a guy who I used to go to school together with when I was 7 to 10 years and who also happens to live next door – so we meet rather frequently. Last week when I met him he was pretty drunk (it was Saturday night) and instead of just saying hi and passing by as usually he wanted to have a chat. The only question he had to me was why I ignored his messages on Odnoklassniki – and while I can swear he has mistaken me for someone and I have not received anything from him, I still had to say I was sorry and would be sure to reply next time I get anything from him. With this, I excused myself because I really don’t think it’s too much fun dealing with a drunk guy offended over me ignoring him on a social network, especially with us meeting virtually every day anyway in real life.

These are just two curious examples (and there are tons of them around here) of the wild growth of the internet population in Russia that is confirmed by released statistics (in Russian): the total internet population has reached 43.3 million people which is 37% of all adults in the country. Given that the entire population of a country like Spain is approximately 40 million people, it is not surprising that the rapid growth rates have brought Russian internet users to 10% of all the European internet users (420 million in fall 2009 based on Internet World Stats data).

But of course the number of active internet users – those who go online daily or weekly – is much lower though still impressive. For example, 25.8 million people in Russia now use the World Wide Web daily and it reflects the growth rate of 8% versus 3 months ago. And while this number is much lower than the entire number of internet users quoted above, it is still impressive as 22% of the country’s population now go online daily. But honestly, some of the Russian ISPs are so persuasive in their sales visits and calls trying to make us use their cables that sometimes it is easier to sign a contract than avoid it.

In other news today Mozilla also shares some of the success in Russia as many users convert to Firefox (or probably download it right after they first go online following some recommendations of their more experienced friends) here: over the first quarter of 2010 the number of Firefox users in Russia grew by 20% which is higher than anywhere else in the world. And I’ll tell you that it is definitely very interesting to live in a country where internet population grows so fast and new users rush to download and use Mozilla Firefox – many probably not even knowing that Internet Explorer 6 ever existed.