Bias Keeps Internet From Global Expansion

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Rahul Dewan typed "India" into the search box of an online stock photo
service, hoping to find digital images of his native country. He found only
three - all of flags. Dewan then typed "Switzerland," a country smaller than
his, and found 33, while "USA" returned 72. His demonstration underscores a
major challenge in getting the developing world online: Even with access,
the Internet remains meaningless to most of the world's population, its Web
sites heavy in English and reflecting a Western tilt.

Much of the Web these days is built by private ventures - mostly in the West
and mostly targeting where they believe the money is: the industrialized
world. As a result, there's little specific to developing countries, which
remain largely offline. According to the U.N. International
Telecommunication Union, 1.5 billion villages have no access at all to
phones or the Internet, and 70 percent of Internet users live in countries
that make up only 16 percent of the world's population. Some delegates to
last week's U.N. World Summit on the Information Society complained that
even when Web sites aren't in English, they are usually in French, Spanish
or one of a handful of other languages common in the industrialized world.

Source:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/7556605.htm