14 DAY TRIAL // A new report commissioned by Google and conducted by Boston Consulting tries to describe how important the web is to the UK economy. The report, titled Connected Kingdom, showed that the internet drives as much as £100 billion for the economy while being the sector with the fastest growth.
"The United Kingdom has embraced the commercial Internet and is now home to the largest per capita e-commerce market and the second-largest online-advertising market globally," the report reads.
"But the character of the U.K. Internet economy is not well understood. This report aims to describe and quantify it," it says.
The big figure in the report is that the internet made up for about 7.2 percent of the UK economy in 2009. And it's growing at a huge rate, 10 percent each year.
In fact, the report estimates that the web will generate as much as 10 percent of the UK's economy in 2015.
Consumption in particular is driving the web economy in the UK as the British are avid e-commerce users. What's more, consumption is expected to be the biggest growth generator in the near term future.
Even now, the internet economy is bigger than sectors such as construction, transportation, utilities and many others. It's worth noting that some transactions and some aspects were not included when determining the worth of the internet economy.
For example, users research a lot of products online before purchasing them, about £40 billion in sales initiated like this are generated each year the report says. This figure was not included.
What's more, business-to-business online transactions are estimated to be worth about £360 billion per year. Online advertising which is worth £3.5 billion per year is also not included.
The report goes into depth analyzing the various aspects of the online economy and its effect on the other sectors. It also compares it to various other countries.