For English speakers it's often easy to forget that the Internet caters to people of all languages, and that not all sites are in English. I thought it would be interesting to have a look at the numbers regarding languages online. I have scrounged together what I could find. Some statistics are a bit old, but give valuable perspective nonetheless.

From Internet World Statistics May 2008

Language - % of world Internet users - estimated world population for language:

• English - 30.4 % - 2,039,114,892
• Chinese -16.6 % - 1,365,053,177
• Spanish - 8.7 % - 451,910,690
• Japanese - 6.7 % - 127,288,419
• French - 4.8 % - 410,498,144
• German - 4.5 % - 96,402,649
• Arabic - 4.2 % - 357,271,398
• Portuguese - 4.1 % - 239,646,701
• Korean - 2.5 % - 72,711,933
• Italian - 2.4 % - 58,175,843

From Wikipedia - Internet in the People's Republic of China

• Report Date 2007.12.31
• Internet Users 210 M
• Connected Computers .cn 78 M
• Domains 9,002,000
• Broadband Users 163.4 M
• Dialup Users 23.4 M
• Wireless Users 58.8 M
• International Bandwidth 368,927 Mbit/s
• Internet Penetration Rate 16%

Translate to Success - 

International Online Spending Statistics 2003

(by country/language)

• United States $2,187.2  
• United Kingdom $165.6
  
• Canada $109.6
• Australia $96.7
• Total English $2,559.1
• Japan $363.6
• Germany $211.1
• Other Asia Pacific (mostly China) $163.4
• France $104.8
• Korea $100.5
• Italy $71.4
  
• Netherlands $59.5
• Mexico $42.3
• Latin America $31.80
• Other countries $272.2
• TOTAL ($B) $3,979

From New Media Review (European Travel Commision) - Languages on the Web  December 2007

• Judging by the number of posts, it seems that the universal blogging language is Japanese. Japanese are the most prolific posters in the world; they are often frequent bloggers (often by commuters on mobile phones). More blog posts were made in Japanese than English during the past three years, according to Technorati data cited in a Washington Post article. That is despite the almost 5:1 ratio of English to Japanese speakers worldwide.
• Some 90% of 6,000 languages (in use today) are not represented on the Internet, according to Yoshinori Imai of NHK, Japan's Broadcasting Corporation. 

From eMarketer, Hispanic Americans Online : A Fragmented Population November 2007 (full report for sale) 

U.S. Hispanic Internet Users: millions - % of total internet users 

• 2006 17.5 mill - 9.6%
• 2007 18.8  - 10%
• Projected:
• 2008 20.2 - 10.4
• 2009 21.6 - 10.8
• 2010 23.0 -11.2

From Contacto Magazine, Online U.S. Hispanics are trendsetters, study shows  December 2006

• Although study respondents consume Spanish language media, Spanish dominant respondents stated that they consume two-thirds of their online content in English due to the lack of Spanish language options.
• Fifty percent go online while watching TV, and slightly over half search for content on their favorite shows and would like to watch extra scenes from their favorite shows on the Internet.