Connectivity cloud company Cloudflare released its annual Year in Review, providing comprehensive insights into Internet trends and threats throughout 2024.
One of the key insights was Google–which despite facing antitrust scrutiny–continues to dominate the internet landscape.
For the third year in a row, Google reigns supreme as the most popular internet service, search engine, and browser.
Here is the list:
- Google reigns supreme: Even as antitrust investigations loom, Google maintained its position asthe most popular Internet service (for the third year in a row), search engine and browser. Google Chrome has a whopping 65.73% share of the worldwide browser marketwith Safari (15.43%), Edge (6.81%), Firefox (4.05%), and Samsung Internet (2.71%) rounding out the top five.
- Popular services come as no surprise: When it comes to the most popular Internet service, Amazon notably fell to #10 this year after ranking 9th in 2023. Following Google (#1) was Facebook (#2), Apple (#3), and Tik Tok (#4).
- TikTok holds up under pressure: The social media platform remains the fourth overall most popular Internet service and second most popular social media site… even with the increasingly credible threat of looming bans and regulations.
- AI remains the hot topic of the year: Despite a growing field of competitors and a series of leadership shakeups, OpenAI remains the most popular GenAI service for the second year in a row. OpenAI is followed by (#2) Character.AI, (#3) Codeium, (#4) QuillBot, and (#5) Anthropic’s Claude.
- Facebook is a mainstay: Facebook beat out TikTok (#2) again as the leading social media platform, followed by Instagram (#3), X (#4), and Snapchat (#5).
- Internet outages are becoming more widespread: Internet outages were due mostly to government-directed Internet shutdowns – both regional and national – with over 220 global outages accounted for in 2024 (180 in 2023).
- Starlink traffic soars… yet again: As Elon Musk continues to make headlines, traffic to Starlink traffic nearly tripled again this year. Malawi witnessed the highest increase in traffic (42x) since initiating service in July 2023.
