The internet in 2018
GDPR came into force on 25 May, and the visible consequence was that every site began asking permission to track. The regulation does not require a banner — it requires a lawful basis for processing, and most sites could have simply stopped tracking — but asking was easier than stopping. The Cambridge Analytica reporting in March had, two months earlier, made the case for the regulation better than any advocate had managed.
The numbers
- Websites
- 1,630,322,579 hostnames responding to HTTP
- Typical connection
- 70 Mbps — Broadband at 70 Mbps.
- A gigabyte of storage cost
- $0.025, in 2018 dollars
How long things took to download
| What | At 70 Mbps |
|---|---|
| A 3 MB song | 0 seconds |
| A 5 MB photo | 1 seconds |
| A 700 MB CD image | 1 minutes |
| A 4 GB film | 8 minutes |
| A 50 GB game | 1 hours 40 minutes |
What arrived in 2018
- GDPR enforcement, on 25 May
- A cookie consent banner on approximately everything
The thing people misremember
GDPR does not mandate cookie banners. It requires consent for non-essential tracking, and a site that does not track needs no banner at all. The banners are what organisations chose over not tracking.
Against the years around it
| Year | Hostnames | Typical speed | $/GB of storage | A 4 GB film took |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 1,045,534,808 | 50 Mbps | $0.030 | 11 minutes |
| 2018 | 1,630,322,579 | 70 Mbps | $0.025 | 8 minutes |
| 2020 | 1,295,973,827 | 100 Mbps | $0.020 | 6 minutes |
Between 2018 and 2020 the typical connection went from 70 Mbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 1, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $0.025 to $0.020 — a factor of 1. The 4 GB film that took 8 minutes takes 6 minutes.
Common questions
- What was the internet like in 2018?
- GDPR arrives, and every website in the world grows a cookie banner. A typical home connection was 70 Mbps, there were about 1,630,322,579 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.025.
- How long did it take to download a film in 2018?
- A 4 GB film at 70 Mbps would have taken about 8 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.
- How many websites were there in 2018?
- About 1,630,322,579 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.
- What do people get wrong about 2018?
- GDPR does not mandate cookie banners. It requires consent for non-essential tracking, and a site that does not track needs no banner at all. The banners are what organisations chose over not tracking.
Related pages
- The internet in 2016 Pokémon Go empties offices, and TikTok launches quietly in China.
- The internet in 2020 Everyone finds out at once whether their home connection is good enough.
- 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