What was the internet like in 2010?

Instagram launches, and the phone camera becomes the point of the phone. A typical home connection was 10 Mbps, there were about 206,956,723 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.090.

How long did it take to download a film in 2010?

A 4 GB film at 10 Mbps would have taken about 56 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.

How many websites were there in 2010?

About 206,956,723 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.

The internet in 2010

Instagram launches, and the phone camera becomes the point of the phone.

206,956,723 hostnames · Broadband at 10 Mbps typical. 3G everywhere.

Instagram launched as a photo app whose filters existed largely to make the mediocre phone cameras of 2010 look deliberate. It reached a million users in under three months with a team of two people. The iPad was widely dismissed as a large phone at launch and created a product category anyway. Netcraft's hostname count fell this year, which was not the web shrinking — a single large domain parking operator went away and took tens of millions of hostnames with it.

The numbers

Websites: 206,956,723 hostnames responding to HTTP
Typical connection: 10 Mbps — Broadband at 10 Mbps typical. 3G everywhere.
A gigabyte of storage cost: $0.090, in 2010 dollars

How long things took to download

Assuming the connection ran at its rated speed throughout, which it did not. Real dial-up throughput after protocol overhead was typically 10 to 20 per cent below the modem's rating.
What	At 10 Mbps
A 3 MB song	2 seconds
A 5 MB photo	4 seconds
A 700 MB CD image	10 minutes
A 4 GB film	56 minutes
A 50 GB game	11 hours 39 minutes

What arrived in 2010

Instagram, in October
The iPad
Pinterest

Against the years around it

Year	Hostnames	Typical speed	$/GB of storage	A 4 GB film took
2008	172,338,726	7 Mbps	$0.20	1 hours 20 minutes
2010	206,956,723	10 Mbps	$0.090	56 minutes
2012	697,089,489	15 Mbps	$0.070	37 minutes

Between 2010 and 2020 the typical connection went from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 10, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $0.090 to $0.020 — a factor of 5. The 4 GB film that took 56 minutes takes 6 minutes.

Common questions

What was the internet like in 2010?: Instagram launches, and the phone camera becomes the point of the phone. A typical home connection was 10 Mbps, there were about 206,956,723 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.090.
How long did it take to download a film in 2010?: A 4 GB film at 10 Mbps would have taken about 56 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.
How many websites were there in 2010?: About 206,956,723 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.

The internet in 2008 The App Store opens, and software starts being something you tap once to get.
The internet in 2012 Gangnam Style passes a billion views and breaks YouTube's counter.
Every year side by side Speed, storage cost and site count in one table
Convert data units Bits, bytes, and why a megabit is not a megabyte

Sources

Web Server Survey — Netcraft
ICT Facts and Figures / World Telecommunication Indicators — International Telecommunication Union
Historical cost of computer memory and storage — Compiled from contemporaneous retail advertising and manufacturer price lists

How these figures are compiled and checked