These ten services control more than half of the world’s internet traffic

A recent study by Sandvine W Gone by Statista Offering the most weighted websites in the global internet traffic. An informative ranking revealing the platforms most used by Internet users.

Video streaming is more powerful than ever

Not surprisingly, streaming video services consume global bandwidth. On top we still find Netflix, which alone accounts for 14.9% of traffic. A huge number when you know the fierce competition the service has faced in recent years. For its part, Disney+ holds 4.5% of global web traffic and Prime Video 2.8%. Thus, 22.2% of global traffic is monopolized by paid streaming services.

The second largest traffic consumer is YouTube. The popularity of Google’s video streaming service (Alphabet) is undeniable. The fact that the platform can be consulted for free, in exchange for viewing ads, partly explains its great popularity. Thus, YouTube represented 11.6% of global internet traffic in 2022. In third place, with 5.9% of traffic, we find “Generic QUIC” which is a network protocol used to speed up web applications over the Internet.

Video games and social networks are very present

We also note the importance of video game platforms, with PlayStation game downloads alone accounting for 3% of global bandwidth. Xbox Live trails behind at 2.9%. The growing popularity of cloud gaming and the massive amount of data needed to stream modern games are expected to drive these numbers even further in the coming years.

Social networks also occupy a favorable place. TikTok is clearly the one that comes first. The Chinese platform accounted for 3.9% of global traffic in 2022, compared to “only” 2.9% for Facebook. In total, these 10 players account for 56.1% of the global web traffic. Figures also show the influence of the most visited websites in the world, as well as the trends and habits of Internet users.

In his report, Sandvine provides more context for these findings:

The average person can spend up to eight hours a day on internet applications. Whether for work, school, communications or education, apps have become an integral part of our lifestyle. »

Another proof, if need be, that screens are ubiquitous in our lives and that the content we consult every day requires an enormous amount of bandwidth and servers to run.

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According to an Arcep study dating from the end of 2021, Netflix occupied nearly 20% of French web traffic. Then Google came in second place with about 11% of internet traffic in France. A discovery that leads some operators like SFR to demand that web giants pay according to their bandwidth usage.