What was the internet like in 2020?

Everyone finds out at once whether their home connection is good enough. A typical home connection was 100 Mbps, there were about 1,295,973,827 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.020.

How long did it take to download a film in 2020?

A 4 GB film at 100 Mbps would have taken about 6 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.

How many websites were there in 2020?

About 1,295,973,827 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 2020

Everyone finds out at once whether their home connection is good enough.

1,295,973,827 hostnames · Broadband at 100 Mbps, and suddenly the upload speed matters more than the download.

The pandemic put the entire developed world on video calls simultaneously and immediately exposed the asymmetry in consumer broadband: connections had been sold on download speed for twenty years, and video calling needs upload. Zoom went from ten million daily meeting participants to three hundred million in about four months. Among Us had been released in 2018 to almost no attention and became one of the most played games in the world two years later, entirely through streamers.

The numbers

Websites: 1,295,973,827 hostnames responding to HTTP
Typical connection: 100 Mbps — Broadband at 100 Mbps, and suddenly the upload speed matters more than the download.
A gigabyte of storage cost: $0.020, in 2020 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 100 Mbps
A 3 MB song	0 seconds
A 5 MB photo	0 seconds
A 700 MB CD image	57 seconds
A 4 GB film	6 minutes
A 50 GB game	1 hours 10 minutes

What arrived in 2020

Zoom as a household word
Among Us, two years after release
The general acceptance of working from home

Against the years around it

Year	Hostnames	Typical speed	$/GB of storage	A 4 GB film took
2018	1,630,322,579	70 Mbps	$0.025	8 minutes
2020	1,295,973,827	100 Mbps	$0.020	6 minutes

Common questions

What was the internet like in 2020?: Everyone finds out at once whether their home connection is good enough. A typical home connection was 100 Mbps, there were about 1,295,973,827 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $0.020.
How long did it take to download a film in 2020?: A 4 GB film at 100 Mbps would have taken about 6 minutes, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.
How many websites were there in 2020?: About 1,295,973,827 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 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