What was the internet like in 2016?

Pokémon Go empties offices, and TikTok launches quietly in China. A typical home connection was 50 Mbps, there were about 1,045,534,808 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.030.

How long did it take to download a film in 2016?

A 4 GB film at 50 Mbps would have taken about 11 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.

How many websites were there in 2016?

About 1,045,534,808 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 2016

Pokémon Go empties offices, and TikTok launches quietly in China.

1,045,534,808 hostnames · Broadband at 50 Mbps. Mobile data plans stop being metered so tightly.

Pokémon Go had more daily users than Twitter within a week and produced the first mass demonstration that augmented reality could be a consumer product rather than a demo. AlphaGo's win over Lee Sedol in March landed a decade earlier than most of the field expected and is the moment a lot of people date the current wave of machine learning from. Douyin launched in September in China and almost nobody outside it noticed.

The numbers

Websites: 1,045,534,808 hostnames responding to HTTP
Typical connection: 50 Mbps — Broadband at 50 Mbps. Mobile data plans stop being metered so tightly.
A gigabyte of storage cost: $0.030, in 2016 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 50 Mbps
A 3 MB song	0 seconds
A 5 MB photo	1 seconds
A 700 MB CD image	2 minutes
A 4 GB film	11 minutes
A 50 GB game	2 hours 20 minutes

What arrived in 2016

Pokémon Go, in July
Douyin, which becomes TikTok internationally
AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol, in March

Against the years around it

Year	Hostnames	Typical speed	$/GB of storage	A 4 GB film took
2015	863,105,652	30 Mbps	$0.040	19 minutes
2016	1,045,534,808	50 Mbps	$0.030	11 minutes
2018	1,630,322,579	70 Mbps	$0.025	8 minutes

Between 2016 and 2020 the typical connection went from 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 2, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $0.030 to $0.020 — a factor of 2. The 4 GB film that took 11 minutes takes 6 minutes.

Common questions

What was the internet like in 2016?: Pokémon Go empties offices, and TikTok launches quietly in China. A typical home connection was 50 Mbps, there were about 1,045,534,808 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.030.
How long did it take to download a film in 2016?: A 4 GB film at 50 Mbps would have taken about 11 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.
How many websites were there in 2016?: About 1,045,534,808 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 2015 A photograph of a dress divides the internet for a week.
The internet in 2018 GDPR arrives, and every website in the world grows a cookie banner.
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